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GOD'S COUNTRY 



BY 

DANIEL HOLMES MITCHELL 




The Ebbert &. Richardson Co. 
Cincinnati 

1910 






"And in. the afternoon, fliey came into a laud in 
tvhich it seemed alwaijs afternoon." 



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COPYRIGHT. 1910 
BY THE EBSERT & RICHARDSON CO. 



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CONTENTS 

I _ God's Country 9 

II — At the Gates 24 

III — The Valley of the Rio Grande 36 

IV — To Acoma, the Pueblo of the Children of 

the Sun 44 

V — On the Trail of the Conquistadors, from 

Acoma to Zuni 72 

VI — In Zuni, the People on the Plain of Cibola . . 98 

VII — Among the Nomad Navajo, the Shepherd 

of the Hills 118 

VIII — The Unremembered People 144 

IX — The Children of the Sands 172 

X — The Snake Dance 192 

XI — The Grand Canon 216 



[1] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Frontispiece. page 

God's Country 8 

"Its Atmosphere, its Silences, its Space," 10 

"Sweet-Scented Woods" 11 

"Magnificent, Deep-Browed Mesas"... 14 

"The Forests of Long Ago" 1-5 

"Their Epitaphs were . . . Canons," 17 
"Volcanoes . . . Rising ... to 

the Eternal Snows" 19 

Lava Flow 20 

Cliff Ruin 21 

Pictographs 22 

"The Land of Our Pilgrimage — Its 

Joys" 2.5 

"Our Itinerary ... as Changeful 

as the Land" 26 

"Our Itinerary ... as Changeful 

as the Land" 27 

"Our Kitchen, Bed and Dining Table," 28 

The Santa Fe Trail 29 

Poisonous Alkaline Springs 31 

Camping, Today, on the Santa Fe Trail, 33 
"The Vision of this Still-Unentered 

Land" 34 

The Rio Grande 37 

Plaza of Laguna 38 

Jesus Guadalupe 39 

Laguna 41 

At the Foot of Acoma Mesa 46 

The Dune 48 

At the Summit of Acoma Mesa 49 

The Well of Shadow 50 

The Enchanted Mesa .51 

Acoma from the Plaza 52 

The New Trail 53 

An Interior . . . Grinding Corn... 56 

The Pueblo of the Sun 57 

A Fiesta 58 

A Fiesta 59 

A Fiesta 60 

The Governor 62 

Youngsters 65 

The Mud-Cone Ovens 67 

A Crater Lake 73 



PAGE 

The Trail from Acoma to Zuni 74 

Beside You Runs the Lava 75 

Descendants of the Conquistadors 77 

The First Flock Enters the Lane 80 

The Shearing 82 

The Plunge into the Vat 83 

In the Vat 84 

The Gate to Next Year's Pasture 85 

Forests of Primeval Pine 87 

The Forests of the Penitentes 89 

The Basin of Tinaja 91 

El Morro Rock 93 

The Beauty of El Morro Rock Abides. . 95 

On the Roofs of Zuni 99 

Distant View of Zuni 100 

Zuni Early Christian Church 101 

Zuni on the River 103 

Zunis' Most Sacred Shrine — the Cen- 
ter of the Earth 104 

Zuni Masks 108 

A Zuni Dance 109 

Ancestral Gods Awaiting the Approach 

of the Dancers 110 

Zuni Water Carrier Ill 

Typical Zuni House 112 

Zuni Water Carrier 113 

Typical Zuni Yard Ill 

Zuni Girls — the Water Carriers 115 

Entering the Antelope Kiva 116 

Zuni 118 

Medicine Man 125 

Ceremonial Masks 127 

A Navajo Hogan 128 

A Navajo Summer Hogan 129 

A Navajo Family Party 133 

Navajo Horse Race 136 

Chicken Pull 137 

A Navajo Society Leader 138 

A Navajo Fiesta 139 

Cafion de Chelley 145 

A Navajo Patriarch 147 

A Navajo Patriarch 149 

[2] 



ILLUSTRATIONS — Continued 



PAGE 

Bones of the Unremembered People. . . 153 

The Unremembered City 154 

The Antelope Ruin 155 

Diggers of Relics 156 

Prehistoric Cliff Pictures 159 

Casa Blanca 160 

Ruined Cliff City 161 

A Medicine Man 164 

The Sweat House 165 

One of the Sacred 167 

Ancestral Gods Awaiting the Approach 

of the Dancers 169 

Walpi — Children of the Sun 172 

Town of Walpi 173 

Road to Walpi 174 

Street Scene of Walpi 176 

Hopi Belles 178 

A Dance at Oraibi 180 

Main Street in Walpi 181 

A Walpi Interior 182 

A Walpi House Top 183 

Zuni Worshipers 184 



PAGE 

The Pueblo of Oraibi 192 

The Sacred Turkeys 194 

The Beginning of the Snake Dance. . . 195 

Snake Priest 197 

An Audience at a Snake Dance 203 

The Bearer of the War God's Bow 205 

During the Dance 207 

Snake Dance 208 

Chief Dancer ? 210 

The Snake Priest 212 

Snake Dance 215 

Cloud Effects in Carion 217 

The Angels' Gateway 217 

Grand View Trail 218 

A Balance Rock 219 

Grand Canon 220 

At the Foot of the Cliff 221 

Looking into the Canon 225 

Grand Canon 227 

"Rain, Rain" 229 

Cloud Effects in Carion 230 

The Sacred Rock 232 




[3] 



May 9, 1909. 

Yet, stricken heart, remember, remember 
How of human days he lived the better part. 

April came to bloom and never dim December 

Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart. 

Doomed to know not winter, only spring, a being 
Trod the flowery April blithely for a while, 

Took his fill of music, joy of thought and seeing. 

Came and stayed and went, nor ever ceased to smile. 

Came and stayed and went, and now when all is finished, 
You alone have crossed the melancholy stream, 

Yours the pang, but his, his, the undiminished, 
Undecaying gladness, undeparted dream. 

All that life contains of torture, toil and treason, 
Shame, dishonor, death, to him were but a name. 

Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season. 
And like the Day of Sorrow, departed as he came. 

— Robert Louis Stevenson. 



[4] 



DANIEL HOLMES MITCHELL died on May ninth, nineteen 
hundred and nine, in the twenty-seventh year of his age. 
He had much talent, still undeveloped and rich in hope, which 
found partial expression in literary fragments left unpolished 
and untrimmed. But even better than his talent was his person- 
ality, compounded of wholesome feelings, staunch friendship, 
enthusiasm for the good, and sensitiveness to beauty. No memo- 
rial can make the individuality of Daniel Mitchell real to those 
who did not know him, but there are some of us whose lives are 
more worth while because he lived. 

He was from a child alive to all impressions of the world and 
art ; and he always had an intense joy in life. In college he pined 
in the midst of what he felt to be the unrealities of scholarship for 
the realities that seethed outside. Uncertain of his calling, he 
groped for a while after the thing that should grip him, and fixed 
at last upon literature in which he should not work for unneces- 
sary returns but for literature's own sake. That meant serious 
study, experiment, and search for self-expression. His accom- 
plishment was small, but he w^as laying up against an unfulfilled 
future. Then he went west — to Arizona — and his vivid nature 
flamed incandescent. He was overwhelmed by the wonder, the 
beauty, the immensity of "God's Country;" and he lived there 
drinking deep of its air and its traditions. Here was at last his 
subject; here was something to which he must give literary ex- 
pression; something infinite, endless; baffling and impelling. 
He was full of it; and to hear him tell of his rides across the 
deserts, and his exploration of strange Indian towns, and his ob- 
servation of weird customs, was to kindle with his fire. His note 
was lyric; and it is that lyric note which pervades this unper- 

[5] 



fected volume. Only the most intense color and fervor could 
catch the tones of sunlight and sunset about those unimaginable 
mesas and canons ; only bold bursts of prose poetry. In the pages 
which follow there are passages of lavish beauty and vivid inter- 
pretation. They make it seem the sadder that such power should 
have been quenched, power which foretold lasting accomplishment 
when maturer art should have mastered the vast subjects that 
here mastered him. 

We who loved him — who still love him — must read this 
volume through unforgettable memories ; but the mere book should 
hold many readers for whom it is wrapped in no such golden haze. 

H. A. E. 




[6] 




GOD'S COUNTRY 



[8] 




CHAPTER I. 



GOD'S COUNTRY 




JHOEVER possesses a merry heart, and enjoys the 
open air, will lind the pilgrimage into God's 
Country to be an holiday. Yet this is not a 
journey to put lightly to the touch, for God's 
Country requires a passport of love from all 
who enter it, and hence, if you travel it not in 
dreams ere setting forth in person, it may be 
you will be debarred from passing through the 
gates. Moreover, should you be a stranger thither, you will 
have difficulty in determining the road because, although God's 
Country is the fairest on the earth, there is no mention of it in 
the geographies. Of course the charts of it are there, but under 
other names, so, if you be incognizant of these, you may search 
an atlas through and through and be no whit the wiser of where 
God's Country lies. Should the location be found, however, but 
little would be gained, for only technicalities would be depicted 
on it — the draughtsman's ugly scratches and rude, misshapen 
lines indicative of mountains, deserts, rivers and ravines, and 
these contours are so empty and so destitute of charm, that they 
might well discourage all thought of pilgrimage. 



[9] 



Be of good cheer: God's Country is too beautiful to map. 
No hand can draw its atmosphere, its silences, its space, the ever 
changing garment of its good green out of doors, or paint its 
dawns and sunsets, and the glory of its stars. These attributes 
are infinite, and so, can not be pressed between the pages of a 
book, or focused on the lenses of a surveyor's instrument. Indeed, 
they are at once so delicate and vast that only the eye can trace 
them aright on the tissue of memory and, since it is they which 




"ITS ATMOSl'IIKIiE, ITS SILKN'C'KS, ITS Sl'ACK" 

make of God's Country a lasting paradise, it therefore remains 
a land of the Heart's Desire, to which each man must journey and 
discover for himself. Thus for all it is existent and a fair 
reality, God's Country is, primarily, an immaterial realm, a 
domain whose closest bond is with the spirit, a wilderness of earth 
and air which captivates the soul. Its landscapes, too, are 
richest in unmarketable wares; in sunshine and moonshine 
shimmering over sands, in breezes blowing through sweet-scented 
woods, in the perfume of grasses, in the blossom of flowers, in 



[10] 



the song of birds, in the sheen of snow, and the passage of white- 
winged clouds across its sky. Thus also, although its boundaries 
include the whole of New Mexico and Arizona, a bit of Utah, 
Texas and Colorado, and a tiny nook of Southern California, 
God's Country is really separate from these. It is in them and 
yet not of them, as it were; nay, rather, these are its dowered 
provinces, beloved beyond measure by all who dwell therein 




s\\ i:i:r-s( KNTF.u woods" 



because of their kinship with that larger kingdom to which they 
pay allegiance of their charm. 

Indeed, God's Country is so elusive, so intangible, so 
intricately hidden in one's intimate affections, that even the origin 
of its name can not be traced with any certainty. Castefiada, 
writing of it in 1543, affirms it was broken from the footstool 
of God, and Lieutenant Button, describing it in 1857, calls it a 
land di\ inely fair, but surely the title came not from their pens. 
It is too indigenous to the soil, too frequent and too easy in the 



[11] 



live speech of men to have been born of books, and must have 
sprung to being all at once and unawares as poppies suddenly 
appear in a field of yellow wheat. Perchance the name was 
first whispered by a shepherd in the hills, or sung by a reaper 
at twilight in his joyous harvest song, or, it may be, a padre said 
it softly in his prayers. But whatever the occasion of its first 
use may have been — and one likes to think it inspired by a 
momentary rapture — it has now become the metaphor of 
all men's admiration, and one hears it everywhere and constantly. 
Yet, whether it be spoken by ranchmen of Phoenix, by miners of 
Tucson, by Mexicans of Santa Fe, by Mormons of Farmington, or 
even by the Indians, who repeat it in their chants, there is always 
in the speaker's voice a cadence of devotion to all the name implies, 
a tone of tender reverence resembling an amen. 

And this land betwixt Raton Mountain and the newborn 
Salton Sea, is of a truth God's Country — sunshine and earth and 
air. Yet when one would tell why, the speech becomes all tangled 
on the tongue, for the charms of this wide, wild region are too 
evasive to be caught with words. Even as music is wedded to 
the soul of its composer, and mingles with the mood of him who 
plays it, so do the spirit and beauty of this land cling like the mists 
of morning to its mountains and its vales, and one can not inter- 
pret their transcendent loveliness unless one learns the genesis 
of these. Nor is this task a facile one to those possessing not an 
intimate knowledge of the stones, for the paving of God's Country 
is some of the oldest in the world. 

Indeed, the lineage of the land began in that dim, dark era 
at the twilight of creation, ere God had spread His spirit of light 
o'er the waters of the world, and the rocks of its hills and valleys 
are so weighted now with years, that none may lift the number of 
their ages that are gone. Yet amid the scars of weather and the 
creases on their face, one can still detect those lines of youth 
which tell how they were fashioned from an ocean's shifting sands, 
and laid in even strata by the movement of the waves. None 
know how many of these rocks there were originally, for some 
have crumbled, some have split, and some have vanished. Lord 
knows where, but, possibly, altogether there were over half a 
score, set one atop another on the bed-granite of the earth, each 

[12] 



with a different texture and a different coloring. Some were 
conglomerates of moss-green or purple, others were limestones 
of yellow or blue, and still others sandstones of orange, red, or 
brown. Each had, besides an inner, hidden beauty — intricate 
veins of copper, turquois, silver, and gold, or ledges of onyx, opal 
and asbestos — and most were cemented together by bands of 
bituminous coal. The water, with kindly forethought or wanton 
carelessness, also seasoned the rocks in the making, with their 
native weeds and grasses, fishes and broken shells, and these, pre- 
served in good repair by their forced imprisonment, are now the 
only means at hand to tabulate the jeons in which the different 
rocks were laid. These fossils themselves pretend to little beauty, 
excepting the charm of superlative ugliness, but seen by the side 
of the horrible names which man has bestowed upon them, or 
upon the deposits in which they chance to lie, they look the very 
acme of perfection. For Cretaceous, Jurassic, Silurian, Carbon- 
iferous, Cephalapsis Lyelli, Brachiopod, and even Dinosaur, 
must send a shiver down every back. Poor, inoffensive fossils, 
and unoffending stones! One wonders they do not hide their 
shame in an utter dissolution ; but no, instead they merely blush, 
dressing God's Country the finer for their erubescent hues. 

This unkind nomenclature, however, is but a tithe of the 
trouble God's Country has had to bear, and from which, as in this 
instance, it has managed to foregather the components of its 
charm. There was even a tragedy, which has not yet been told, 
in the weaving of it, strand by strand, from threads on the ocean's 
floor. For, after each layer of rock was laid, the sea thrust this 
above its surface to be passed upon and proven by the air, and 
the air made sport of the water's handiwork. The sun shone 
down on it and burned it dry ; the winds and the frosts caressed 
it with their cold ; clouds massed their mists above it and chastened 
it with rain ; rivers dissolved parts of it again into sand and bore 
the grains back to their mother, the sea ; rank grasses littered it 
with leaves ; forests grew upon it to be old and decay ; wild beasts 
walked its wastes and lay down and died, until at length on each 
occasion the land became aweary of the struggle to be fair and 
then it sank gently back once more to sleep in the ocean's arms. 
So, God's Country is a Venus, twelve times or more reborn, and 
at each birth more perfect and more gracious than the last. 

[13] 



Then so soon as the topmost terrace had been securely set in 
place, and the land, as before, had arisen from the sea, and the 
air, as of yore, had fought it and harried it home, a new and 
more violent tragedy began. For the land, on seeking its accus- 
tomed sanctuary, found but a grimmer torment waiting beneath 
the waves, because in its absence their nature had changed. The 
sea was no longer that placid, affectionate sea, which had fash- 
ioned God's Country with delicate art, but a wild and turbulent 
ocean, surging hither and yon; an angry, tempestuous whirlpool 




"MAGNIFICENT, DKEr-I!l!l)\\ KI) 5IKSA.S" 



that swept in foam-flecked billows onward from pole to pole. Its 
cold, sharp currents cut like knives, its calmest eddies were keener 
than the winds. Around the rocks of their own creation its 
torrents seethed and boiled, breaking them into fragments, tear- 
ing some strata away, carving others into fantastic cliffs, uplift- 
ing great boulders from their anchorage, and twisting, refining, 
polishing the land until scarcely a vestige remained to it of its 
earlier conformation. 

Indeed, so whole was the miracle of change, when God's 
Country at length broke loose and rose once more and forever 
above the tides, that the pale sun looked upon it, and knew it not. 

[14] 



Everywhere was the wreckage of the sea. Yet through this 
seeming chaos had the land been wrought anew, so that, exhausted 
as it was, and wounded to the heart, it was bleeding beauty, none 
the less, from its multimillion scars. Magnificent, deep-browed 
mesas had been chiseled from its plains; chiseled through layer 
and layer of rock, and then worn away to that stratum which 
had caught the ocean's fancy at the moment; so that some were 




•TIIK rOlil'.STS OF LONG AGO" 



high and some were low, and each was different from the rest 
in color and character. Around these table-lands were jjlaced 
a host of pinnacles and buttes, obelisks, spires, and colonnades, 
whose pointed summits served as a foil to their flatter surfaces, 
and were almost more varied of form and hue than the valleys 
which spread between. On these the tides had uncovered the 
forests of long ago — forests whose trees had suffered a sea- 
change to agate centuries before — and spread the prostrate 
trunks of stone over wide reaches of the land. In places, too, they 



[15] 



had also bared the bones of forgotten monsters again to the light, 
and left them resting gently on the surface of the ground, as if 
they had but died the day before. But the most beautiful of all 
the ocean's unintended gifts was a film of finest, many-colored 
sand, which was flung in a rainbow tissue over monument, mesa 
and plain. 

When the sun beheld these changes, and perceived that the 
least of them had made God's Country incomparably fair, he 
turned its lover at the last, and wooed it with a tenderer radiance. 
Speeding first into the barren, snow-capped mountains of the 
North, he fought there with the glaciers, which held these in a 
thrall. Then, when these melted from him in a sparkling ava- 
lanche, he took their rivers captive, thawed them of their chill, 
and sent them as a bridal present to the land. Across it these 
spread in a chain of lakes, within whose mirror the land might 
see its altered countenance. Then was it proud of its comeliness, 
and lifted its rocks toward the sun, 'til they overlooked the world. 

Ere they had reached this height, however, God's Country 
was made to pay the price of its creditable pride. For the rivers, 
upon feeling the pulsations of this change, grew timid, and hesi- 
tating in their course bade the glaciers give ear. And when 
these heard the tale, they laughed aloud in glee, discerning in its 
purport their chances of revenge. On the instant, melting faster, 
ever faster than before, they commanded the rivers to hasten, 
lest God's Country raise a barrier to their flow, and under the 
spur of this impetus, the frightened rivers went suddenly mad 
in their yearning for the sea. They turned into roaring, tum- 
bling floods, they flung themselves like wolves upon the land, tore 
it asunder in their rage, and gnawing it with their icy teeth, ate 
deep into the earth. So when the sun drained their anger dry, 
their epitaphs were a million caiions, running like veins and 
arteries over the land. Some of these were small and delicate, 
some infinite and vast, but all, whatever their depth might be, 
were very beautiful. 

Indeed, these cafions have a puissant charm. Piiions, 
cedars and pines grow now in the crannies of their cliff^s; cotton- 
wood trees and luka cane edge the shallow rivers, flowing on their 
creamy floors of sand; wild flowers nestle coquettishly amid the 

[16] 




■iiiKii; Ki'iTAi'iis \vi;i;i: 



CA.NOXS" 



[17] 



fallen debris from their sides, and sagebrush bushes have stolen 
down from the rolling uplands roundabout to warm themselves 
in the sunshine caught between their palisades. In each, these 
ornaments of green, together with the tracery of water on the 
walls, the brilliant colors of their rocks — sunburned by day, at 
evening cooled by purple shadows and their perfumed breezes — 
the absence of sharp, ungraceful lines, and the blue sky over all, 
combine to make a perfect whole, a valley of contentment fairer 
far than the one of which the psalmist sang so well. Yet often- 
times these caiions ring with an ancient, human note, whose 
echo invests with sadness their mellow overtones. 

For shortly after they had been created, a fair-skinned, 
brown-haired little people came into God's Country from some 
other clime and builded them fortresses and towns high up in the 
wave-worn hollows of these walls. They would seem to have 
been a simple, quiet folk, endowed with laughter and ingenuity, 
and, quite content with God's Country, made for several genera- 
tions these pretty cafions home. Here they dwelt in peace and 
plenty for an unknown length of time — farming the fertile 
caiion meadows with wooden hoes and spades; plaiting sandals 
and baskets from the yucca and caiion reeds; moulding ollas, 
plates and dippers from the plastic canon clays; carving images 
of birds and beasts from the shining caiion pebbles; painting 
the cliffs with their finger tips; raising babies, and cotton and 
peaches and corn ; twining feathers into their hair and songs into 
their legends. Then, suddenly, they either died or were driven 
entirely away beyond the recollection and knowledge of Man. 
Indeed, so complete was their exodus that only these silent ruins 
and the dead in their narrow graves remain to tell us they had 
ever been. 

Whither they went we know not, no more than whence they 
came, but the cause of their departure may well have been another 
new calamity which fell upon the land — a calamity greater than 
all of those which had befallen before, yet one which, like the 
others, was in the end to add a finer garment to God's Country's 
beauty. By now the land had come to be a plateau raised eight 
thousand feet above the level of the sea. The structure which 
nature had posted underneath to bear so ponderous a weight, 

[18] 



through some mischance, seems not to have been strong. It weak- 
ened and gave way ; God's Country shook and trembled ; cracked, 
then burst asudden into flame. At once enormous volcanoes 
thrust their heads up through the fissures, and piled their red-hot 
cinder crests, cone above cone, upon its plain, rising indeed, to 
the altitude of the eternal snows. Amid the roar of earthquakes, 
these belched forth obnoxious gases and murky clouds of smoke. 




"VOI.CANOKS 



KISINU 



TO THE ETERNAL SNOWS" 



which, meeting the affrightened winds, were rained in deadly 
shower on the land, shrivelling vegetation, and strangling beasts 
and men. Then, lakes of lava bubbled in the craters and, over- 
flowing, crept in streams of fire down the volcano sides, over the 
mesas and into the caiions. These floods up-ended buttes and 
pillars in their path, plastered the cliffs with their billows, and 
oftentimes buried the caiion cities beneath their molten mass; 
but finally, the cooler currents of air froze them solid in their 
flow, and unable to go farther, they congealed upon the plains 
into ridges of gray-black pumice stone. 



[19] 




LA\A FLOW 



[20] 



Then the damage below was hastily repaired, the volcanoes 
slept, and God's Country dared to blossom forth once more in 
greenery. Sagebrush bushes took root again on its mesas and 
in its vales ; shrubs sprouted on its cinder cones, growing apace 
to be trees, and cacti spread their flowers on its lava and its sands. 
Soon snow fell in drifts on the mountain crests, melted and fell 
again, dissolving on each occasion into noisy, purling brooks, 







'-•■ _ •■* ■ 



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It ~ JtX^apg 






,:iai;-^-;.:^'-. ■>'■». ^ia. : : ■ -<..^lX- <^ijel 



CLIFF nriN 



which were happy just to be off and away. Past many a rippling 
pool these sped in white cascades of foam and, coming at last 
into the deserted caiions, smoothed out the creases in their 
floor of lava, either wearing it thinner bit by bit, or hiding it 
completely underneath a bed of stones. Thus the years came 
and went with gentle tread. The walls of the cliff dwellings 
toppled and partially rotted away, owls made their nests in the 
unfrequented rafters, mountain rats took the cold chimneys for 
their home. While the cities crumbled, the land lay sorrowing, 



[21] 



but once they were in ruin, it tore the mourning garment of its 
lava into shreds and clad itself in joy again to win the favor of 
the sun. 

Then, finally, when it had all but lost the scar of its first 
short motherhood of men, other peoples, who neither remembered 
nor knew the race which had fiourished before, came into God's 
Country and claimed it for their own. From the North and 
South and East and West, these came in great migrations and 




PICTOdliAl'HS 



fought upon it for supremacy. Some of these hordes, in whose 
veins perchance ran a strain of the land's departed children, 
copied the dwellings of their predecessors and abode in towns on 
the mesa tops, eventually becoming the pueblans of today — the 
Zuni, Hopi, Acoman and Rio Grande tribes. The rest, however, 
were sprung from a nomad stock, and looked with disfavor on a 
settled home. So they — the Apache, Navajo, Hualapi, Yuma, 
Pima, and Mojave — possessed themselves of the forested hills and 
rolling, upland meadows, from whence they might make forays 
on their peaceful neighbors' fields. Through centuries, whose 



[22] 



number not even they can tell, the struggles between these people 
waxed and waned, with now the nomads and now the pueblans 
slightly uppermost until, at last, the advent of another stronger 
race allied them all together for the purpose of defense. 

These new intruders on God's Country were alien to the core, 
having come from across the sea, and were wedded by speech 
and manner to the lands on its farther shore. They were of 
those who had sailed in the wake of Columbus to the undis- 
covered world, and had already won them an empire nearer south 
in the mountains of Mexico. Now, flushed by the fever of con- 
quest with which their time was full, they were reaching farther 
north to grasp a richer realm for themselves and Charles V of 
Spain. However, these Spanish Conquistadors found in God's 
Country no trace of those things which they had come seeking — 
gold and the bruited cities of Cibola — yet, for all their faults. 
they were a band of noble adventurers, and their hearts contin- 
ued in their enterprise until they had conquered God's Country 
for their own. They founded the town of San Gabriel and the 
City of Santa Fe, converted the pueblans to a show of Christianity, 
enacted laws, saw to it these were kept, and bringing hither 
horses, sheep and kine, settled themselves upon ranches to enjoy 
a measure of God's Country's great content. Slowly, but surely, 
their settlements spread until every vale held a hamlet or a town 
and monastery, and all the land was tinctured with their Old 
World chivalry. 

Thus, once more, the glad years came and went unnoticed, 
save that their passage changed the name of these Spaniards to 
Mexicans. Then, suddenly, the sound of war again aroused 
God's Country from daydreams of its beauty. For a space there- 
after, the rumor of battle fretted it with alarm, only to deed it 
at the last with scarce a scar of conflict to the Americans, within 
whose care it has since remained inviolate from harm, fast 
growing to a domain big with empire and worth, yet one which 
they shall ever keep God's Country of the open air. 



[23] 




CHAPTER II. 



AT THE GATES 



s 





UCH is this land of our pilgrimage — a 
land grown old through an hundred sor- 
rows, a land kept young by a thousand 
joys. Possibly this youth will impress 
us the more, for despite the wrinkles on 
its face, at heart God's Country is super- 
nally young. Its hills are chapleted with 
flowers, its deserts are appareled in the 
raiment of the sky, and the echoes from its caiion walls are clear 
as the happy laughter of a child. Yet something abides in God's 
Country still finer than this youth; something so delicate, so 
ethereal as to be almost wholly without name — the essence, 
perhaps, of its unpremeditation. 

For God's Country is the single spot in the entire world which 
nature has wrought distinctly for her pleasure. Here, indeed, 
no higher will imposed conditions on her craft or bound her by 
the measure of ulterior purposes, and so she was free to embroider 
the land with errant whims and fancies in her hours of repose, 
giving no thought to the pattern sketched in the Master Draughts- 
man's mind. Hence, these mountains were not moulded by com- 
mandment, these valleys were not hollowed out by rule. Instead, 
they are nature's personal creations, evolved from her own 
most intimate designs — these ornaments she has chosen from 



[24] 



all her store of beauty to adorn this acreage given her for reward. 
Upon these she has also lavished her love, her time, her graces, 
until they no longer seem her handiwork, but the incarnation of 
herself, possessing her infinite generation, her lasting loveliness, 
and God's Country, like the islands of the Hesperides, has become 
a garden husbanded with the golden fruit of hours, and kept invio- 
late from men. 





■ 




HH| 




'' .'.■•.c^^'-^ ' • 



•TIIK LAND OF 011! rll.C HIMACK — ITS JOYS" 



It is a garden, however, where there is little rain. Yet, 
never once does God's Country appear to be suffering from 
drought. For its mountains are clothed in forests of pine ; piiions 
and cedars grow on its mesas and buttes; sagebrush meadows 
with daisies pied cover its valleys and plains. Even its sunburned 
deserts are constantly in bloom ; with primroses, hollyhocks and 
lilies in the spring, and gorgeous cacti of no month or season, whose 
flowers are more brilliant than the multicolored sands. These 
themselves are such a rainbow of ever changing shades that were 
the exotic cacti taken from them, the deserts still would blossom 
like sunsets in the sky. Moreover, the constant dryness imparts 



[25] 



a charm to the atmosphere. For the air of God's Country Is 
clearer than one thought that air could be, and the sunshine sifted 
through it is so marvelously fine, so wondrously diffused that even 
the shadows it casts are bright as the iris light reflected from a 
mirror's beveled rim. 

But possibly the most alluring trait God's Country owns is 
the bountiful, haphazard manner in which its different landscapes 
have been scattered everywhere, or mingled altogether into one. 




^^0Mk^te«»sKkci«Qft=;4^^;^s4j^j,jj5;l^,^^l 



■feH^s=;4^ 



t^v^ 



■■oil! ITINKDAUV 



AS CIIANfiEFVL AS 'I'lIK I^ANF)'' 



Like as not, you will find a mountain of iridescent green, capped 
at the summit with perpetual snow, fronting a tropical desert of 
pink and yellow sands, and over against this on the farther side, 
a purple mesa may lift its cedar crest before a sagebrush prairie 
of palest shimmering gray, whose meadows finally fade away 
into the blue of the horizon. But howsoever the hills and valleys 
may chance to be arranged, each group of them will seem finer 
than the one unfolded last, so that you may wander through 
them forever and for aye and never reach the limit of their con- 
stant, luring change. 



r2G] 



On this journey, however, we shall travel through only a 
few of these, for God's Country is too extensive to be traversed at 
one time. Yet, although these form but a portion of the land, 
a tiny corner of the whole, they should be sufficient to show us a 
measure of its charm. For we shall visit the pueblos of the 
Acomans and Zunis, go thence to the upland valleys where dwell 
the Navajos, then, after resting in Cafion de Chelly by the graves 
of the Unremembered People, pass on to the Province of Tusayan 






'■¥--'^ 


t 




1 




h * 


i ' 




•■(II U ri'INKIlAUV . . . 




AS rllAMIKKI I. AS llll: LAND" 



in the midst of the Painted Desert, and so arrive at that wonder 
of all wonders of the world, the Grand Canon of the Colorado 
River. Thus our itinerary is as changeful as the land, and so 
ought to help us to understand its fair infinity. Moreover, it 
takes us and keeps us out in the open air, where we must wander 
the wilderness sleeping under the stars, having the good, brown 
earth for our bed, kitchen and dining table, the sun for our time- 
piece, the brooks for our bath, and the moon for our reading lamp. 
Accordingly, the railway will be beyond our ken, and to reach 
these destinations far from cities and their toil, we must travel 
God's Country ahorseback over its old, sequestered trails. 



[27] 



The most famous of these is the Santa Fe Trail, which runs 
from Kansas City to Southeastern Colorado, thence down to the 
town from which it takes its name, across God's Country to the 
Sierra Mountains, and over these into California. It is mis- 
leading, however, thus to designate its route, because most of the 
titles employed therein are as modern as its own, and this trail 
existed for centuries before they were bestowed. Indeed, its 
length of service transcends its length of mile, for it has been a 




"Orll KITCIIKX. BED AND DINING TABLE" 

link between East and West since God's Country's time began, 
and all of the land's inheritors have trodden it in turn. The 
first wayfarers, whose footprints still remain upon the trail, were 
the cliff dwellers, who traveled it in that mystic long ago ere the 
volcanoes had paved it with lava, and blocked it with craters and 
cones. Next came the Indians, to whom it was a great commer- 
cial highway. These wandered up and down it, exchanging their 
wares for countless generations, the plains tribes bartering 
buffalo robes for the turquois of the pueblans, who traded both for 



[28] 




THE SANTA FE TRAIL 



[29] 



abalone and wampum in California. Then the Spaniards arrived 
and used the trail as a military road. So early as the winter of 
1541, Coronado, the leader of the first Conquistadors, followed it 
from the Missouri River to the pueblo of Tiguex, returning from 
his search for the Gran Quivira, and thenceforward they marched 
along it from the Pacific to Cochiti, warring upon and crushing 
the races by its borders, and founding or protecting settlements. 
Finally the Pathfinder, General Fremont, entered God's Country 
by this trail in 1848, and possibly foreseeing the part which it 
was soon to play in history, christened it with the name by which 
it has ever since been known. 

Twelve months thereafter the Santa Fe Trail was a byword 
through the world, and men were selling house and home that they 
might travel it. For during the gold excitement of the days of 
forty-nine, when all who could were venturing upon an Argosy, 
this trail became their favorite path across the wilderness to Cali- 
fornia. Nor was this odd, for apparently this Highway of the 
Holy Faith possessed two great advantages over its northern 
rivals. It lay through a land already partially settled — settled, 
indeed, for full two hundred years — where towns and ranches 
off'ered hospitality and protection, and the Indians along it were 
mostly tribes of pastoral pueblans, who had no desire to scalp the 
Argonauts. Thus it seemed to them the safest route to the land 
of El Dorado, and they spread along it joyfully in scattered cara- 
vans, believing it blazed with security, and cleared from every 
harm. 

Yet in the end the Santa Fe Trail proved most dangerous of 
all, and long ere the thousands upon it had thinned to hundreds, 
and the hundreds shrunk to scores, it exacted a toll of human life 
and human suffering surpassing the large sum total of its com- 
petitors. Indeed, so cruel was it, it would seem God's Country 
put itself at pains to thwart these Argonauts, angered, perhaps, 
that they should cross it without a compliment, blind to the beauties 
it contained because of the golden film in their eyes. However 
that may be — and who shall say God's Country has no pride? — 
it harassed them at every turn, and, using its surface attrac- 
tions as a lure, thrust up such great impediments to their journey 

[30] 



that death at length came to them as a deliverance. For those 
Indian ambuscades which made the others perilous — nor was this 
weapon beneath it on occasion — this trail through God's Country 
substituted the horrors of fatigue. It led the Argonauts by day 
over thirsty deserts and mesas of rock, where the sun was never 
clouded and a shade tree never grew, only to bring them at eve- 
ning to poisonous alkaline springs, and interrupt their sleep with 




rOlSONOrS AI.KALINK Sl'lUNGS 



gusts of hot, sand-laden winds. It parched men's tongues, it 
dried the women's breasts, it suckled the children with hunger, it 
goaded the oxen with heat ; and as one by one they sickened and 
died, it gave them a shallow, roadside grave, on which so soon as 
their comrades had dipped the rise ahead, coyotes and buzzards 
fought for supremacy. 

This trail had, however, between whiles, its lighter, pleasant 
side. There were gay fiestas in the Mexican towns, ceremonial 
dances in all of the pueblos, marriages and christenings in the 



[31] 



monasteries, antelope hunts on the sagebrush prairies, picnics in 
the woods, balls in the moonlighted patios of ranches, serenades, 
horse races, chicken pulls, the twanging of guitars, and the sing- 
ing of many an half-remembered song around camp fires burning 
in the starry night. 

Thus, though the trail took much, it gave some passing pleas- 
ure in return; and had the Argonauts not been steeled against 
its excellence, God's Country would have opened them its heart, 
and made them free of riches a thousand times more lasting than 
the yellow veins they sought. For they were a valiant, eager com- 
pany, ready for every danger, sturdy through every ill, and save 
they were tainted by the lust for gold, would have proven worthy 
the good will of this land. But around the camp fire, in the noon- 
day toil, at ease, through battle and in death, this will-of-the-wisp 
they had come a-seeking, beckoned them on toward the western 
sea, and so they raced across God's Country with curses on their 
lips, not guessing that they were the vanguard of a Nation's 
exodus, which should ere finished, turn this land into an El Dorado 
greater than theirs could ever be, and seeing themselves at each 
garden spot only so much the nearer their desire. Indeed, they 
were too busy counting the miles behind them as children count 
their pennies, and rejoicing in each addition to the sum, to per- 
ceive in the daily horizons unfolded aught but the enchanted 
Golden Fleeces of their dreams; and it was for this purblind 
spirit that God's Country punished them. 

The epic of this modern Argosy has never yet been gathered 
into words, but whosoever desires may read of it in the registers 
of churches, in the archives of towns, in the journals of survivors 
and the scattered Indian legends of its passage. But, above all, 
may one read it in the trail, writ deep by the wheels of wagons 
and the tramp of weary feet. And what a tale it is in its entirety ! 
Full of adventure, keen with the zest of deeds, freighted with 
sorrows, thrilling with joys — verily, a story to make the pulses 
quicken, and eyes grow dim with the poetry and pity of it all. 

The years have erased so many times the writing on the 
trail that now its lighter cantos are all lost, and only the 
tragedy remains upon its dusty parchment. Yet it bears a 
living witness of this in the names bestowed upon its portions by 

[32] 



the suffering Argonauts. For one need not have seen Death 
Valley, Diablo Caiion, Hell Mesa, or the Mountain of Skulls, to 
know them for waste places of the earth, where these Argonauts 
would have bartered a thousand El Dorados for a little cup of 
water. Yet, except for these grim monuments, the trail today 
has all but fallen out of memory. It still lies a broad, white 
riband athwart the land, but sagebrush bushes, cornfields and 
dunes have interrupted its continuity, and the travelers upon it 




TollA'i. (IN I'll!-; SANTA FK I KAll, 



now are few. A ranchman herding his sheep or cattle, a Morman 
peddling a wagon of fruit, an Indian going to town to trade, an 
idle, ignorant tourist, these are all. But whosoever they be, their 
business is not the digging of gold, and hence the trail has no 
meaning for them, save its utility. Indeed they often follow it 
to the branching of their ways, not deeming it different from 
other roads, and note with surprise the broken wheel or rusty 
musket, which chance or the winds have exposed to view. 

Nevertheless, it is fitting on this verbal pilgrimage, that we 
enter God's Country by the Santa Fe Trail, for none other has 



[33] 



played so large a part in its stirring history. So let us take it, 
and ascend to the summit of Raton Mountain in Southeastern 
Colorado. 

This is a stiff climb and may possibly test your best wet- 
weather temper, for Raton Mountain is the mother of storms. 
Standing at that distance from the Rockies, which it does, and as 
sponsor for a lesser range of hills, its bare, bald head is exposed 
on every side, and is a favorite playground for the elements. 
Even on the clearest day, when all the surrounding landscapes 
are bathing in the sun, a haze as white and fragile as the veil of 
an Arab bride is apt to be floating near its crest, and if the hour 
be stormy, then the spectacle is a marvel to behold. For angry. 




"THK VISIDX OK THIS STII.I.lXENTEllED LAXI) ' 



steel-gray clouds spring forth unnumbered from the mountain's 
granite scraps, and never still, yet never hurried, weave them- 
selves in and under and through the pines. Around the precipi- 
tous slopes they twist and curl, now wavering in thunderous inde- 
cision, now rolling together in lightning-hemmed folds until, 
having gathered their moisture in a mass, they unfurl in a sodden 
blanket of darkness for the shrapnel winds to tear, and spreading 
far above the land, hide it completely underneath their canopy of 
rain. It is seldom, however, that the mountain's crest is bowed. 
No matter what tempest may be brewing below, this lifts beyond 
the reach of storm into the cold, clear region of the snows, as if its 
only pleasure were in aspiring. 

Once at the summit, there is a new feel to the air. It is 
wafted up the southern slope in soft, capricious gusts and gentle 

[34] 



zephyrs, perfumed and laden with incomprehensible things. 
What lands you may have traversed to come thus far on your pil- 
grimage, no doubt seemed in your passage through them rich and 
beautiful ; but now, beside the vision of this still-unentered land 
whose spirit greets you in the breeze, they look in perspective poor 
and commonplace. You stand, indeed, at the gateway of a land 
to which you will never, can never, find the peer ; a land whose sum 
and substance is perfection, whose beauty is the beauty of Eden, 
whose wealth is the dower of worlds that have yet to be born. A 
mirage of it shimmers in the sky, and lo, it is so divine you veil 
your eyes lest it fade away like a realm in a dream. And what 
is the song which that mocking bird sings, there, on the bush by 
your side? A lilt of the sun, of the moon, of the stars, of the 
earth, of the wind, of the rain ; and if you would learn the mean- 
ing of his song, or know the joys whereof he sings, follow him 
down to the valley from whence these breezes blow, into God's 
Country, into the open air. 




[35] 




CHAPTER III. 



THE VALLEY OF THE RIO GRANDE 



lL«fti^llil ESCENDING from Raton Mountain, the Santa 

HHPwi^rJ Fe Trail wanders a maze of foothills, seeking 
^^HjSJ '"^^ a passage for its miles, until, at length, having 
^^^Bsi^i twisted free of their cafions and ravines, it enters 

^^^HjBJ£ the valley of the Rio Grande, where it may run 
^^^^'l^^l with more precision again upon its way. It 
P' ^^^ were best for us, no doubt, to follow its example, 

—^ — — ^^ and hurry on direct to Acoma, but only the blind 

could find it in their hearts to travel this meadow without a pause 
of rapture at its beauty. So let us linger in it for a while. 

Long, purple mesas and tilted crags, along whose crests grow 
cedars and occasionally pines, hem this valley on either side, and 
through its midst meanders the Rio Grande, a sparkling river 
of shallow depths and gentle, ordered haste, which even in time 
of flood preserves an air of modesty. Indeed, no other stream 
is quite so laughably misnamed. For the Rio Grande is never 
grand nor ever turbulent, but goes like a tawny, velvet-footed 
panther, shyly and slyly to drink of the sea, usually too timid to 
use more than half its bed, and always purring drowsily in the 
sun. Tall, slender poplars and spreading cottonwoods border its 
pools by either bank, standing bough-deep in them at times, and 



[36] 



making with the glint of light upon the rii^pling waters a scarf 
of tender green and gold, which flutters down the valley as far 
as eye can see. 

These trees have crisp and glossy leaves with frosted silver 
linings, that are ever a tinkle in the wind, and merry with song 
and plumage of mocking birds and thrushes, canaries, linnets, 
finches and orioles. Beside them, too, protected in a measure by 
their shade, lie cornfields and orchards, musical with the hum- 
ming of bumblebees. Beyond the fences of these farms, whose 




THE RIO GHAXDF. 



crops are nurtured by the cool, refreshing river, dry, rolling pas- 
tures of buffalo grass stretch to the distant, hazy hills, and over 
these gray-green ranges, chased with the dappled shadows of 
fleecy clouds, innumerable flocks of sheep graze through the live- 
long day, returning at twilight to the corrals of those Indian 
villages whose smoking chimneys greet one everywhere. Some 
of these towns are builded by the river, others are hidden snug 
among the hills, and a few, less fortunate, are perched on knolls 
of the open plain. A visit to these charming, pagan cities of the 
Saints — Taos, Bernahlillo, Jemez, San Ilde Fonso, Cochiti, San 
Domingo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and San Miguel — would be 



[37] 



one long, uninterrupted pleasure, but so bizzare is each, and full 
of unaccustomed sights and sounds, that they alone would con- 
sume our pilgrimage. So, now, lest they tempt us from our path, 
let us hasten at once down the valley to the pueblo of Isleta, where 
the Rio Grande turns sharply south, and thence across a red 
plateau, barren of everything but sand, to the pueblo of Laguna, 
still further west. 

This Indian town was founded two hundred years ago by a 
band of renegades from Acoma, and having, since then, sheltered 




PLAZA OF LAC.rXA 



malcontents from every pueblo round about, has consequently 
never lost the marks of its inception. A hodgepodge of peoples 
and customs and tongues makes up its present vulgar quantity, 
so that the town, which has besides been modernized of recent 
years because of its situation on the railroad, is almost empty of 
any interest. It contains, however, one beautiful plaza amid 
its dirty drab, where the sunset lights and shadows play radiant 
hide and seek, and is oddly enough the occasion of a legend con- 
cerning the hallowed picture of a saint. 

Jesus Guadalupe will tell you this tale if you ask him, and 
pay him a smile — tell it you out in the plaza as he sits by the 

[38] 



church's door, fanning himself with an eagle wing and smoking 
cigarettes. He is old, is Guadalupe, and wizened and thin and 
spare. His blue jeans are frayed at the edges, his blanket is 
pitted with holes, his face and his sombrero are both weather- 
stained with years, and his hair is white, which in one of his race 
denotes extraordinary age. Thus, his appearance warrants one 
in thinking he may have had a hand in those deeds from which 




JESUS GUAIJAM I'K 



the legend sprang, and one would suppose he could narrate it 
correctly. But have a care, for Guadalupe belongs to the Coyote 
Clan — and the coyote has never been famous for his veracity. 
And, forsooth, if you wish to hear the authentic version, you had 
better not go to Guadalupe for it (but to C. F. Lummis' volume, 
"Some Strange Corners of Our Country"), for he has so altered 
this to please his fancy that now, for the most part, the tale he 
tells is cut whole cloth from his imagination. The more he has 



[39] 



added of fable, however, the more charming it has become; so 
let us content ourselves to listen to him and not attempt to separate 
the few reinaining grains of truth from the naive chaff of his 
dissertation. 

Yet, ere you hear the legend (lest you fail to understand how 
a saint should be in the annals of this little Indian village), you 
must know that after the Spanish Conquest of 1598, a number of 
the pueblos, including Acoma and Zuni, embraced the tenets of 
the Catholic Church. Their conversion at this time, however, 
was merely temporary, being superinduced by a fear of the 
Spanish arms, and so soon as this menace was removed, about 
a century later, they all revolted, repudiating it by a massacre 
of the priests and a destruction of the churches. But a few 
years after they were again brought safely within the fold by the 
kind persuasion of Franciscan Fathers, and now are the first to 
call themselves good Catholics today. Their Christianity, none 
the less, is but a thin veneer, whose outward and visible signs are 
churches in which a mass is seldom said, and municipal saint days 
in which the towns indulge in their pagan rites and dances. 
The inward and spiritual grace is more trite still, consisting 
only of some minor Catholic ceremonies that, shorn of their orig- 
inal meaning, now adorn their older, quainter native liturgy. 

Now, Guadalupe: 

"Si, seiiors, Acoma — " His forehead wrinkled thoughtfully 
and pointing toward the town, he shakes his finger at it, while he 
musters up his words. 

"A — CO — ma." 

Ah, yes, to be sure, Acoma. We intended going thither 
today, did we not? And it is already noon. Then, perhaps, it 
were best for the tale to be told by someone who has heard Guada- 
lupe repeat it before. For Guadalupe is slow of speech. 

"Heh? Que?" 

And would much prefer to smoke his cigarettes. 

"Sta bueno, seiiors. El me contenta." 

An obliging compadre, Guadalupe, very well. 

When Laguna was founded, there chanced to be in the church 
at Acoma the picture of a saint (San Jose, was it not, Guadalupe? 
"Si, senors, San Jose.") which had been presented to the town 

[40] 



by no less a person than a King of Spain. This painting was 
most poor in execution, biit rich in memories of witchcrafts cured 
and evils set at naught ("Si, but it was a week ago since San Jose 
healed a poor woman of a disease, as all men know, sefiors, by 
uncovering to her husband the very spot where a witch had buried 
bad prayer plumes to harm her. And would you do me the honor 
to believe me — and I tell but the truth, sehors — yesterday, it 
is — " "Yes, Guadalupe, but — " "Amigo, look, I am quiet as 




la Lechuza, the owl, is by day.") and for these reasons was very 
precious to all the Acomans. Indeed, it was the most sacred 
possession of the town. Thus it is not surprising that the rene- 
gades took it with them when they departed, without so much as 
asking by-your-leave ("They left in the night, sefiors."), that 
they might have the Saint's protection upon their enterprise, and 
hang the painting here eventually in a chapel of their own. His 
presence among them did not prove, however, to be an unmixed 
blessing. For so soon as the Acomans perceived that it was gone, 
there was a great to-do about the matter, and war for San Jose's 



[41] 



recovery was immediately declared upon Laguna. Thencefor- 
ward, until some fifty years ago, there was unending strife be- 
tween these two pueblos. Each was in constant martial prepa- 
ration, either repelling or planning an attack. Men and women 
on both sides were murdered ("My holy grandfather, seiiors, a 
knife — "), children were captured and reduced to slaves, fields 
were laid waste, flocks were destroyed, and several churches de- 
molished at Laguna. 

Poor San Jose ("Aiy, aiy, el Pobre!") ! During these years 
he had a chequered and often compromising career. Indeed, he 
was no better than a vagrant, for he can not be said to have had a 
settled home. Now he was at Laguna, and now at Acoma, and 
now in the desert half-way between the two. He never knew in 
the morning where he would spend the night, and might awake 
on the morrow to find himself a league from the place where he 
had gone to sleep. ("And do you not pity him, sefiors? It con- 
tents one so much the better to be at home with the children at 
play in the evening. And the padre thinks — ") Once only in 
these troublous times did San Jose spend a month of quiet, and 
this was when reposing at the bottom of a well. Although on 
another occasion he was buried for a week with imposing cere- 
mony, under a surreptitious and quite unpronounceable name. 

The struggle for his possession might yet be waging had 
not the last padre resident at Acoma conceived a brilliant scheme 
to terminate it. Bethinking him of the courts, this padre Lopez 
("He was a black priest, senors. He had sold himself to the 
Evil Ones, I think. Or so they say here in Laguna. I myself, I 
do not know") haled Laguna before the bar of justice upon the 
dire charge of common theft. But the citizens of this pueblo 
proved as wily in this war of words as in the war of men, and 
used the padre's weapons to such purpose that his case had finally 
to be carried to the Supreme Court of New Mexico itself. This 
tribunal adjudged San Jose to the pueblo of Acoma, but decreed 
that that town must loan the painting to Laguna once a year lest 
the people there be deprived of all religious consolation. ("As 
how could we manage without San Jose? Does he not to us bring 
our life blood from the Elder Ones of Old?") 

[42] 



Such is the legend, according to Guadalupe, and he "tells but 
the truth, seiiors." So, if his statements do not accord with those 
of history, shall we not rather blame history for its malversion 
of the facts? Only, with due regard for Guadalupe, perhaps, it 
were well not to carry fault-finding too far. For, should we do 
so, we might grow weary awaiting here for San Jose to come from 
Acoma — on that annual journey which Guadalupe describes so 
wonderfully well. Nor would it be courteous to believe the good 
Saint pines in secret for those stirring days of yore, when he was 
more of a power in the land; for if, as Guadalupe says, poor 
Padre Lopez met death in a trying way, from the chance explosion 
of an ancient pistol, well, what is there in that accident? — "Ah, 
but, sefiors, it was because," here Guadalupe whispers and crosses 
himself with fervor, "it was because — " but let us not impugn 
his Saintship's honor. 

Then, adios, amigo Guadalupe. We are off to visit San 
Jose's Pueblo of the Sun. 




[43] 




CHAPTER IV. 



ACOMA, THE PUEBLO OF THE CHILDREN 

OF THE SUN 



J^ SOON as the railroad is left behind, the land increases 
^ in unkempt bareness until its plateau dies from shame 
L beside the gleaming furrows of a field of alkali, only 
I to blossom forth renewed upon the farther side into a 
f desert of splendid lines and hues. Here tiny green 
lizards frisk nimbly over sands, horned larks twitter 
and chirp among the withered wisps of grasses, butter- 
flies fan their wings on the yucca spikes, and long- 
eared jack rabbits jump from sagebrush thickets. Here, too, the 
blood-red cactus flowers flash at each other like signal lamps, and 
a hush comes up with the wind that lays a silence on your lips. 
For now you are entering a cloister of the air, riding a corridor 
which leads to a chapel of the sun, wherein all things are mute 
and in accord. Great, hooded mesas of white and purple rock 
confine your way upon either hand, converging gradually one 
line toward the other, until the lowlands between them contract 
into a valley, which, in its turn, becomes a long defile. Indeed, 
as you go, these rough-hewn hills so edge ever nearer to the trail, 
it finally seems that this must cease before their shining, solid 



[44] 



wall. Then, suddenly, without warning, the chapel portals fly 
apart, the mesas, which have hugged you close, curve out afar to 
the north and south, and you find yourself at the entrance to a 
wide, ethereal plain. 

This basin comprises the domain of the Children of the Sun. 
In its midst is their finest temple, the fair Enchanted Mesa — a 
smooth, triangular mass of rock, eight hundred feet or more in 
height, that is wrought from a sandstone of the palest pink — and 
back of this there lowers, a mile or two away, the long brown 
monolith on which is perched their city, Acoma. These twain, 
alone, are all that break the yellow brocade of the sands, save 
where the distant, crumpled hills encircle the plain with their 
lilac mantle, bestowing upon it the aspect of a mystical land apart. 

This desert, however, is not in need of other ornament, for 
when you behold the Enchanted Mesa, all else, perforce, gives 
precedence to its sublimity. Smooth, precipitous, unsurmount- 
able, its background naught but the bluebell sky, its approach a 
grove of dark green junipers, this strange rock lifts from the 
desert like a dawn from the sea, and with its rose cliffs compassed 
in a gossamer of light, reaches upward and outward above you 
like a mirage of the sands. There is also something within 
it finer than all this lyric beauty, something stupendous, which 
raises it beyond its solitude, something which even from the 
golden desert's edge, calls to your spirit, bidding you to come 
beneath its panoply and rest. For this rock, so long the Godhead 
of the Children of the Sun, is like to none other rock the wide world 
over. Indeed, it scarcely seems a rock at all, but rather a revela- 
tion, whose purport is not clear, a temple builded not with hands, 
but willed into achievement as the stars were willed of yore, and 
set among them as among its peers to be a witness to their god until 
he choose to thrust them back into that chaos whence they sprang. 
This from afar; then, as you approach it, step by step, its mir- 
acle and beauty grow until the cliffs take fire from the hidden 
soul within, and flame with the fervent splendor of the Grail. 
Beneath it, at last, the revelation comes. There is no surface 
to this mesa's walls. Instead, you gaze not on them, but within, 
where an essence of irradiant sheen, whose movements are as 
music, comes and goes ; and a myriad of voices, elusive, soft and 

[45] 




AT THE FOOT OF ACOMA MESA 



[46] 



low, are singing a chorus that steals upon your ears like the half- 
forgotten melodies of dreams. A momentary pause, the while you 
struggle with this meaning, and then, behold ! the mystery is clear. 
For it comes upon you with the rush of a mighty sunset wind, that 
this Enchanted Mesa is the Heart of the World, that the songs 
which it is singing are but the pulsings of its life — the murmur of 
its rivers, the sobbing of its seas, the whisper of its forests, the 
rustle of its plains, the straining of its mountains and its ice floes 
and its lava, the laughter of its waterfalls, the blooming of its flow- 
ers, aye, and the mingled cadence of its birds and beasts and insects, 
the tingle of its sunshine and the patter of its rain. With the 
rhythmic beat of waves at play on a pebbly beach the paean rises, 
throbbing higher, ever higher, until you close your eyes to the rock 
in humble homage of its glory. Then, there quavers through 
these echoes a measure nearer hand — the voice of the desert, 
intoning its sweet, sad litanies ; and, on the instant, your soul has 
joined its worship to the desert's prayer. For are you not also 
earthborn like the sands? Then is this rock your mother, too; 
your mother and your god, which was in the Beginning and will 
be at the End, your god, within whose keeping rests your love, 
your life, your right to claim a knowledge unto all. And. gazing 
on it once again, you see it as it ever was, as it will ever be — 
your earth, God's earth, which is one with the stars, and set with 
them on a plain above the ebb and flow of years, where life is born 
transcendent, and where death has never come. Thus, when you 
turn away to wend toward distant Acoma at last, although you 
go slowly, and your heart be full, yet are you happy that to you 
this vision was vouchsafed, aye, happy, also, in the faith that so 
long as the infinite love which created you endures, so long will 
this Enchanted Mesa stand forth from its mystical desert, immu- 
table and unharmed, for it is that love imbedded in a stone. 

Far different is the mesa of Acoma. This rock has also an 
alluring majesty, but its beauty is never the beauty of peace, nor 
does it reveal to you those things God buried deeply in your soul. 
A long, lank eminence of brown, shattered and riven by the stress 
of ages, and carven with columns and pillars by some long-for- 
gotten sea, it fronts you, on the other hand, with the challenge of 
despair. And it has need to question your approach, for all the 

[47] 



elements in turn have massed their strength against this puny 
rock. Water has washed it with foam-flecked billows, and har- 
assed it with rain ; fire has stormed it with lava, and wrecked it 
with the sun ; the earth has shaken its foundations ; and even the 
sharp-toothed desert winds which tiptoe past the Enchanted 
Mesa, leaving the light foot sands untouched and level at its base, 
have met with Acoma in war. Great dunes, the scars of this 
conflict, now surround the mesa on every side. They are wedged 



pk 




-N. - 


^ife-«^^ 


!■, 





THE DINE 



into every crack and cranny of the rock, they curve about every 
pinnacle and spire, and wherever a cleft in the parent stone is 
of large magnitude, they slope in unstained yellow toward the 
crest. It is, forsooth, as if the town had dared the winds to 
battle, and that they had hurled against it the weapon nearest 
hand, striving in one fell swoop to hide its beauty from the eyes 
of men. Yet, Acoma, for all their strife, still holds the victory ; 
nay, gains but an added glory from the dunes. For these twist 
about the mesa until against its cliffs they seem the coils of a golden 
python, sleeping in the sun, and Acoma sits above them on the 

[48J 



jagged mesa's edge like an eagle, meditating flight that moment 
they be reawakened by the winds. 

And what a climb it is to Acoma! You ascend by the rib 
of a dune, which runs from the desert deep into the rock like a 
ladder leading from earth to sky. Up, up, you mount along this 
path of pure, molten, gleaming gold, rising higher, ever higher, 
until the earth falls from you like a garment at the last, and you 
see beyond the pallid hills, which rim this desert basin round, yet 




AL llIK ^1 M.MIT OF AKl.MA MESA 



other hills and deserts and mesas far away, and farther yet, green 
mountains plumed with diadems of snow. At length, beneath 
the haze of light which hovers over them, all contours melt into one. 
and shimmer like a garden of mermaid's roses and anemones 
under the sea. Yet, still the dune continues as if it had no end, 
but were a ray of sunshine flung across the arc of heaven's blue,. 
and half blinded by its brilliance, lulled by the heat waves rising 
from its sands, you lose all sense of motion and seem floating 
toward the crest, not of your own volition, but on the pinions of 
the air. Then, when you seem about to fall direct into the sun, 



[49] 



the trail turns sharply, leaves the dune and hides in a crevasse of 
the wall, a deep, cool well of shadow, which the sunlight never 
enters. This narrow cleft is choked with boulders, worn smooth 
by many feet, and clinging insecurely to notches chiseled in its 
sides, you scramble, stumble over these until you reach the sum- 
mit, and discover you are standing at the gates of Acoma. About 
you are a medley of strange faces, strange attires, and these, 

with the earth be- 
neath you so infinitely 
far, arouse you a 
while to wonder 
whether you be not 
come to some unchart- 
ed planet, the fairy 
realm of your dreams. 
Nor does this fan- 
cy alter upon turning 
toward the town, for 
the pinnacle on which 
this stands is but a 
slender shaft of rock, 
and the crest of it is 
covered so completely 
by the dwellings, that 
Acoma appears, as it 
were, pendent in the 
sky. I n d e e d, i t s 
houses are so white 
and crowd so close on 
to the verge, that in 
those seasons when 
the mists draw nigh, you scarce can tell where they begin and 
where the houses have an end. And so this strange pueblo of the 
Children of the Sun is like a city on a cloud, whose parapets o'er- 
hang the margin, and to look out of its windows is like looking out 
of Heaven, so wonderful, so dazzling, so resplendent is the view. 
Near by a host of lesser crags thrust up their spires through the 
dunes that curve and twist about the town like golden glaciers; 




•nii: WKI.L OF SHADOW 



[50] 



beneath the desert shimmers with a rosary of hills etching its 
pastel meadows in abalone pearl ; and opposite, overtopping all, 
stands the Enchanted Mesa, serene, irradiant and calm, in its 
brooding solitude. If it be winter and the day be clear, there 
also arises from the north horizon the snowcapped summits of 
the San Mateo Mountains, crowning an hundred miles of earth, 
and shedding a rainbow radiance from their triple-peaked crests 
to mingle with the sunshine, which from dawn to darkness rings 
the town in a coronal of light. Nor is this all; the town itself 




THE ENt'HANTKD MESA 



is fairer far than any you have ever seen before. Taos, Berna- 
hlillo, Zuni, Laguna, Cochiti, taken together, can not match its 
beauty. For the white-winged clouds which pass it by and touch 
it ever and anon, have made it light of head and heart, so that 
its native mood is one of gay insouciance. It dances as oft as 
the heat waves dance on the yellow plain beneath it, and with 
step as fleet as the dervish winds which swirl across the dunes. 
And if it be unlovely for a moment, why what then? 'Tis only 
for a moment; thus it bids you forget whatever blemish it may 
have in the glory of its setting, and hides its shame, therefore. 



[51] 



beneath a merry lilt of laughter. Nor yet content, it borrows 
from the plumage of the sky — thieving the jewels of the moon 
to hang upon its house tops, robbing the sunset fires to tapestry 
its walls, gleaning the lightning flashes to illuminate its plazas, 
and pilfering the coff'ers of the rains and snows and stars to pin 
yet other ribands on the whiteness of its breasts — that it may 
be attired as becomes the high estate of the mother of a nation 
and handmaid of the sun. 




ACOJIA FliOM Tllli I'LAZA 



Yet, upon entering the village, you will be disappointed, for 
not until you are intimate with pueblo architecture can Acoma 
win a place in your affections. At first it will seem squalid and 
greatly in decay. Indeed, were it not for the people moving ever 
to and fro, with their bright-hued clothes, their laughter and their 
eager, restless bustle, you would probably think the town had been 
deserted for a century. This phase, however, will pass so soon 
as you discover the dwellings are all builded inside out. Then 
you will find a comeliness in their dilapidation, a charm in their 
lack of order, in their topsy-turvyness. The crooked streets, 

[52] 




THE NEW TUAIL 



[53] 



the crazy plazas, the houses with their doors askew, will change 
into a maze of quaint surprises and allurements, and Acoma, 
though a pueblo of but half a thousand souls, holds in its compass 
more delight than any or all of its sisters by the banks of the Rio 
Grande. 

It has two entrances : the trail up which we scrambled, and 
another along the selfsame dune, but slightly broader than the 
first, which has been blasted from the rock since San Jose's return 
to permit of the presence of burros in the village. This trail, 
indeed, is the finest fruit of Guadalupe's vaunted peace, although, 
perhaps, no pleasure to the burros, for previous to its construction, 
all firewood had to be carried on the backs of men and boys from 
the edge of the desert, several miles away. At the summit of 
this highway is a large, irregular plaza, really the outskirts of 
the town but practically the center of its little knot of life. For 
here the sacred festivals and dances are enacted; here is the 
market, the court of justice, the gossip ground and the village 
laundry. The washtubs of this last are natural hollows in the 
rock, which catch and hold the rains, and there is not a more 
amusing spectacle in Acoma than the sight of its maids and 
matrons, with their robes about their knees, scrubbing their frocks 
and faces in these liquid pools of light, directly they have been 
refilled by a passing thundershower. On the right of this plaza 
stands an adobe church, preserving a memory of that time when 
priests and soldiers quartered here, and to the left of it is the 
little town. The church is a long, low structure, inordinately 
plain, whose ornaments consist of two square, squat belfries, a 
balcony and a cedar door, but it gains a dignity when seen against 
the distant pearly sands quite out of keeping with its unimport- 
ance because, in spite of its ugliness, in spite of its neglect, it is 
the single building in the whole of Acoma, which does not appear 
on the instant of collapse. 

The private dwellings look in total ruin. They are the 
queerest, ramshackle affairs that you have ever seen, tilted one 
against another in the most haphazard fashion, as if their stones 
were tipsy from the ozone in the air. The masonry of adobe 
or undressed limestone shale, is sometimes plastered, but more 
often not, their tiny windows invariably slant, and their doors 

[54] 



are usually situated on the roof, whither you must ascend by a 
tall, gaunt ladder or a series of slabs protruding from the walls. 
Most have a double story, some have three, and a few can boast 
four terraces that rise like kitchen gardens far above the narrow, 
winding alleys. Regarding these last, one wonders what was the 
purpose of their plan, for although they intersect the town from 
one end to the other, and are well paved, too, by the natural rock 
on which the daring village perches, yet, the inhabitants leave 
them religiously alone to the ministrations of the pigs, ducks, 
burros, goats and chickens, preferring themselves to walk around 
the terraces of the roofs, or along the slender copings which divide 
these each from the other. This habit of theirs, above all else, 
bestows upon the pueblo that ruinous appearance, which with its 
want of order, gives to it the outline of a Grecian border, tacked 
to the sky by crazy chimney pots. 

Within, however, the houses are spick and span. Each 
family division consists of one large front room, used for all 
purposes, and two smaller ones behind, that are dark as closets, 
and only employed for the storing of the winter corn and the 
extra furnishings. The living room is very plain, but quite 
commodious, and its appointments, although simple, are as pretty 
as can be. It has a floor of mud, mud walls, whitewashed or 
tinted blue with clay, and a mud-and-faggot, raftered ceiling. 
Its tiny windows have no panes, its entrance has no door, but, as 
if to counteract these facts, which are scarcely a misfortune in so 
tropical a climate, a low, adobe settle runs completely around its 
sides, supplying the place of chairs and table, pantry, cupboard 
and workshop, all in one. The stove is a slab of slate arranged 
above the coals of an open fire, whose chimney projects from one 
corner like an old Apache hood, and opposite this are the stone 
mattetes for grinding melon seeds and corn. The cooking pots 
and utensil baskets, with possibly a jar or two containing herbs 
or their decoctions, are placed beside these on the settle, but the 
large, painted olla filled with the precious drinking water, is set 
at the other end, where the draft can cool it of the desert sun. 
Blankets are spread upon the floor, strings of red chilli pods hang 
from the rafters, a saddle and bridle are suspended from a peg, a 
wampum necklace, a wooden doll, a granite mortar and obsidian 

[55] 




AN INTERIOR 



CRINDIN'G CORN 



[56] 



pestle, and a spinning spool are clustered together on a shelf, and 
over the entrance to the inner rooms a bunch of eagle feathers 
dangle, waving in the breeze. 

The inmates of such a dwelling must needs be simple folk; 
and the Acomans are as simple and contented as can be. They 
are a stocky people, light of skin and full of face, with lustrous 
eyes and noble foreheads, firm chins, thin lips, and mouths relieved 





THE PIEBLO OF THE Sl'N 



by the tracery of smiles. In youth they are both graceful and 
very fleet of foot but as they grow in years, they grow in measure 
and precision, and move as if wearing the halos of innumerable 
laughs. They are quick-witted, too, and big of heart, and go 
through life as it were one long fiesta, happy, carefree, bouyant 
as the clouds that hover above their house tops in the dawn. 
Indeed these Children of the Sun are gayer than the gay. From, 
the time they awake in the morning until their good-night be 
said, they string their hours to a wreath of uninterrupted 



[57] 



pleasure. For they make a pastime even of their labors, and 
so soon as these are finished, the games and sports begin. First 
perhaps a rabbit hunt will occur upon the desert, for this is a 
favorite amusement in which the hunters run in couples, beating 
the brush and quarry with sticks and deerhide thongs; and if 
at the end the maid has proved a better Nimrod than the man, 
then he must don her dress and bear her kill to the village, amid 
the badinage of all. Next, there will be horse races, foot races. 




wrestling bouts, archery contests and hocky games; and finally, 
once or twice a week, a public dance or festival is given in the 
plaza, which, for all it is religious, has never a hint of religious 
solemnity. For the dancers are tricked forth in brilliant, fanci- 
ful attire — blankets of white and red or yellow, kilts and sashes 
of green and blue, with turquois and coral necklaces, and silver 
beads and belts — and the songs they sing while swaying to the 
music of pipe and drum, are blithe, melodious, effervescent lyrics, 
their sparkling laughter set to antiphony. 

[58] 



Both in sight and sound these fiestas indeed are the mer- 
riest affairs. Yet they strike the keynote of the Acomans' relig- 
ion, for this embroiders their life like a cloth of gold, knotted, 
it may be, here and there with a silver strand of sorrow, but 
always knotted on the under side. In its practice forsooth, 
there is nothing solemn, and but little that is sad, although a 
quantity of undiscovered, undeciphered mystery. For their 
faith is a nature worship, born of the wonders round about them 
— the rocks, the dunes, the desert, the morning and the night — 




but with Pa-yat-ya-ma, the sun, transcendent always in their 
hearts, and the God of the Lean Years, rising like a smoke behind 
his throne. Nevertheless, they are intimate with all their deities, 
for these are not mere abstractions but creations of flesh and blood 
who, for all you may not see them, hover ever in the air, both 
able and ready to interfere without a moment's warning in what- 
soever comes beneath their notice. No single act escapes their 
vision; no whisper fails to reach their ears; they may grant a 
wish ere it is asked in the gleam from a lightning flash, or wreck 



[59] 



the toil of ages in the twinkling of a star. These gods, however, 
are benign, except when angered by disservice, and are ever eager 
to bestow their blessings upon the true of heart who are learned 
in their ways. Thus it behooves their children, as they walk 
the trail of life, to read aright the omens put upon it for their 
guidance, lest they lose their souls, and wander like the Maiden 
in the Moon, seeking forever and ever the vanished Shi-pa-pu. 
This dread of never landing on the Islands of the Light, turns 




everything they see and hear, turns everything they think and do, 
into a revelation for the observant Acomans — a mystery which 
much be read at once and understood, for about them is a veil of 
dark which hides in mist the Great Beyond, and a budding flower, 
a drop of dew, the spinning of a spider's web may each be but a 
symbol of the Elder Ones of Old. Therefore, the Acomans carry 
their faith wherever they may go, into their fields and pastures, 
into their plazas and homes, using its rites to decipher their 
reveries and dreams, asking its inspiration in their sorrows, tasks 



[GO] 



and pleasures, and wearing its emblems on their breasts and its 
meaning hidden in their hearts, with the unquestioning assurance 
of an endless adoration. Indeed, from the time when as babies 
they lie on the sacred bed of sand, until they are borne upon spruce 
boughs to their pollen-sprinkled grave, no act is undertaken, no 
purpose set afoot, without consulting the deities with prayer and 
supplication, lest misfortune come upon them and their City of 
the Sun. 

Thus, the head of Acoma must be high priest and potentate 
together. This personage is chosen for life, with the title of 
Cacique, but upon assuming office he is given an assistant, who 
as a rule succeeds him at his death. The Cacique, however, is 
by no means absolute. As a matter of fact, while nothing is 
done without first gaining his consent, his powers are rather 
advisory than initiative ones, and although his course is presumed 
to be determined by the gods, it is moulded largely upon the 
opinion of his associates. For he has to assist him first, an 
elective council composed of the priests and elders (and all of the 
pueblos are governed practically the same), and then there is 
also elected every year a governor, a war chief and a town clerk 
or a crier. These three have entire dominance over all civil 
matters, inclusive of its law, while the Council and Cacique control 
ecclesiastical affairs. The Governor is treasurer of all the town 
finances, directs the administration of the common herds and 
fields, and with the war chief is joint judge of all offenses and 
suits in equity. This latter individual, the war chief, is, of 
course, little more than a figurehead today. Originally he led 
upon the warpath, on which his dictum was supreme, but now, 
except when judging, which occurs but very seldom as the Aco- 
mans are a law-abiding people, he spends his time planning rabbit 
hunts or in rounding up stray droves of sheep and cattle. 

Nor do the cares of office weigh upon the crier's head, for 
his twofold duty consists in, first, the keeping of the church's 
key, of which he is the reverent but absent sacristan, and next, 
in announcing at dawn from the house tops the calendar for each 
day, acquainting the folk with the dances or fiestas to be held, 
and what labor for the public weal the Governor, in his wisdom, 
has appointed to be done. 

[61] 



For the pueblo is conducted on a communistic basis, so that 
no matter what private wealth its citizens may possess, they 
also own the right to a share of the common property, toward the 

maintenance of which they 
must contribute. This com- 
munism is ingrained also into 
their social life. For the unit 
of society is not the family but 
the clan, whose members live 
together in a certain area, 
dividing thus the village into 
quarters. Nor is this all; 
these clans in turn are joined 
together into groups, each hav- 
ing its special festivals and 
secret worship chambers, be- 
cause their components are 
thought to be affiliated through 
those gods by whom they were 
created at the beginning of the 
world. This spiritual bond in- 
deed is the only one between 
them since the marriage laws 
prohibit an admixture of their 
bloods. Hence, a man may not 
marry a maiden belonging to 
his clan, nor one from those of 
which he is a kindred. Mar- 
riage, however, is a sacred 
duty, and so the youth hies him 
to another clan, woos his in- 
amorata and is wedded by a 
priest. Thenceforward, his 
life is an amusing contradic- 
tion. For he leaves his domicile and lives in the precinct of his 
bride, yet keeps his clan apart from hers, not even revealing to 
her his divine, fraternal name by which he trusts to be greeted 
when he attains the sky. In fact, both parties to the union 




TlllO COVEliNOl! 



[62J 



preserve their social status distinct from one another. The wife 
constructs their dwelling so soon as she is able, and thereafter is 
absolute mistress of all that it contains, including the fruit of her 
husband's fields. He, on the other hand, owns his flocks and 
herds, participates only in his clan fiestas, and may do anything 
he please save commit an infidelity. For, upon proof of this, 
the woman can evict him from her household, and even deny him 
the privilege of speaking with his children, who trace descent 
from her, and thus are members of her clan. 

Divorce, however, is a rare occurrence, for the pueblans are 
monogamists, and devoted to their families. Beside, they have 
little leisure to go philandering, for there is work to do in plenty, 
and they busy themselves about this with cheerful industry. So 
soon as the morning service to Pa-yat-ya-ma is finished, and the 
frugal breakfast eaten in the early light of dawn, the men fare 
forth with their implements to till the desert fields, the youths 
depart upon burros to tend the flocks of sheep, and the elders 
gather at the shrines to propitiate the gods. Then the house- 
wives send their children to the shaman for instruction, and 
begin with the maiden's assistance to set their homes in order. 
They have the sleeping blankets to air and lay away, their rooms 
to sweep, their corn to grind, their bread to bake, their babies and 
pots and pans to clean, and last but not least, their water to fetch 
from the pool at the foot of the trail. By the time these tasks 
are completed, it is certain to be noon, when all within the village 
enjoy a short siesta. 

They are up and about again, however, the instant the first 
breeze tempers the edges of the heat, but upon occupations of a 
less laborious nature. For now the elders chat or tell each other 
of the legends, the youths play games or climb the cliff's, and the 
men race over the desert, rounding up herds of cattle, matching 
their ponies as they run or flinging their buckskin riatas at one 
another's heads, while the women sit on the terraces fashioning 
pottery, which they decorate with a badger brush in intricate 
designs. 

This art of pottery making is common to all of the pueblans, 
but the Acoman tinajas, ollas, dippers, cups and bowls are 
accounted the best, and the townsfolk gain a goodly revenue 

[63] 



from their sale to less efficient neighbors. Indeed, today these 
ceramics, with their mystical ornamentations in vivid reds and 
browns, are the source of the greatest pride and income, but there 
once was a time when Acoma was also famous for its textiles, a 
time when fabulous prices in turquois, coral and sheep were paid 
for the blankets and mantas dyed and woven by its men, and 
embroidered with pretty figures along the edges by its women. 
Then the citizens of no other town were half so deft with their 
looms and needles, but now the only weaving done is that for the 
garments worn in the fiestas or the sashes and garters still pre- 
served from their ancient tribal costume. For the women find it 
cheaper to fashion their attire from the garish calicoes and prints 
on sale in the trader's store, and the men have all adopted the 
coarser American dress. 

Yet there is still a poetry and charm in their apparel, and 
it possesses both a physical and visual warmth it never had 
before. The men wear loose white cotton trousers, blue jeans 
or corduroys and negligee shirts with fancy bosoms, left open at 
the throat, wrapping themselves, if the day be cool, in army 
blankets of turkey red. Their heads and their heels have alone 
escaped the process of a change, for they still wear buckskin moc- 
casins in preference to shoes, and bind bright bandas in their 
hair, which hangs in a shock about their neck and shoulders. 
For ornament, they have wampum beads or strands of coral and 
abalone with jet and turquois pendants and silver bracelets, rings 
and buckles, hammered from their extra cash. The women's 
clothes are quite as various — tight-fitting blouses and mantas 
or skirts, whose patterns are most often gaudy flowers. These 
are confined at the waist by a woolen sash of red and green, but 
the blouses sometimes have no sleeves and the skirts reach only 
to the knees, since their legs are incased in the spiral folds of 
voluminous buckskin boots, held in position at the top by fringed 
and knotted woolen garters. Two ribbons, similar to these, bind 
the double braids of their long black hair, which is draped in a 
yellow shallais shawl, either flowing free or tied in a bow beneath 
their finely moulded chins. In contrast to these motley garbs 
of their color-loving eldei's, the children run stark naked until 
the age of six, although sometimes a prim and proper, super- 

[64] 




YOUNGSTERS 



[65] 



sensitive mamma will hang about her baby's neck a strip of calico, 
which flaps piquantly out behind like the pennant to a ship. 

These rolly-polly youngsters are the first to make one wel- 
come, needing only a stick of peppermint to turn them into 
friends, but their parents are no less eager to extend their hospi- 
tality. For so soon as you leave the plaza to explore the crooked 
streets, these beckon to you from the house tops and invite you 
to enter their homes, where they oflfer you everything within 
their larder — tortillas, piki wafers, tea and coffee, mutton stew, 
corn, chilli, beans and melons, and in the autumn season, yucca 
jelly, pihon nuts and prickly pears. They will also show you 
their treasures, the mother's pottery, the father's guns and 
saddles, the daughter's pretty dresses, the son's bows and arrows 
and quiver of the mountain lion skin, the children's wooden dolls, 
the watchdog's puppies, their rabbit robes, their blankets, their 
jewels, their silver bridles, their baskets, their little images and 
their festival attire — everything, indeed, which you care to see, 
except their fetiches, which hang on pegs in the inner rooms. For 
these are precious, and the gods would strike with lightning any- 
one revealing them to alien eyes. That they may not relieve your 
curiosity in this matter gives them, however, as much concern 
as your breach of manners gives you, and to lift the incubus 
from the conversation, some man among them who speaks English 
will proffer his services as guide. 

If you are wise you will accept of them, for he can show 
you in an hour what it would take you a fortnight to discover 
for yourself, and will add for good measure a running commen- 
tary in mingled Mexican and English, that brings the bizarre vil- 
lage nearer to your comprehension. First, perhaps, he will take 
you to the place where a house is being built, that you may watch 
the women lay the walls and lift the rafters, and when you see 
a burro arrive with his load of masonry — no more than a half 
dozen stones or a single sack of adobe mortar — you realize how 
ardous architecture is at Acoma, since every part of a dwel- 
ling, from the mud floor to the ceiling, must be brought in this 
patient manner from the desert far below. Next, passing- 
through an alley, he will point out a worship chamber, and allow 
you to wait by the hatchway, which opens through its roof, until 

[66] 



a priest mounts its ladder with prayer plumes in hand, and 
wrapped in his scarlet blanket, hastens away to some distant 
shrine hidden snug in a cranny of the mesa clilf. Then he 
leads you over the house tops, past the chimney pots and the 
mud-cone ovens which are set out of doors, on the terraces like 




TlIK .MID -CONK DVKNS 



domes on a Greek Cathedral, to the plaza where the youths and 
maidens are playing sports and games. While here, if the 
sacristan can be found and wheedled into humor, he will give you 
a glimpse of the little church with its carven altar and fluted 
columns, and the famous painting of the wan and melancholy 
San Jose hanging above the crucifix, with its crown of paper 
flowers. Or, if the key to the door be not forthcoming, as is 



[67] 



likely, then you, perforce, must be content with a view of the 
cemetery, which lies behind the church, rimmed in by a low adobe 
wall. This churchyard alone is worth a journey hither, for there 
is no other like it in the world. It is almost an acre of creamy 
sand, spread ten feet thick on the mesa summit, and if labor ever 
eases the slumber of the dead, then those within should rest in 
peace, for all of its earth was carried here from beneath the 
Enchanted Mesa in wicker baskets on the backs of men. This 
task was imposed by the Spanish padres, for previous to their 
arrival the Acoman burial places were the dunes and mesa caves. 
and the recollection of these brave and zealous missionaries will 
prod your conductor's memory anent the tragic role played by 
the Spaniards in the village annals, so that while you stroll past 
the women washing their mantas in the basins, he will recon- 
struct the epics enacted on this plaza, when the Conquistadors 
were striving to win God's Country for their own. 

Nor is any other spot so fine a tribute to their daring, for 
from Coronado onward each Conquistador in turn held his 
brightest crown of glory from this Pueblo of the Sun. Don Juan 
de Ofiate was the first to wring allegiance from its people, but 
lived to pay most dearly for this temporary homage. For a few 
weeks later, while he himself was gone upon his journey to the 
Moqui villages, the Acomans enticed his lieutenant, Don Juan de 
Zaldivar, into the plaza with only twelve companions, and rush- 
ing upon these unawares at dusk, while they were supping, killed 
all but five of them, who leaped in desperation from the cliff. 
Though it seems a miracle, four of these survived the impact of 
their fall and escaped in the darkness to bear the tale of treachery 
to Don Onate. Don Juan de Zaldivar was among the slain, so 
Ofiate sent his elder brother, the noble Don Vicente, to avenge his 
death and punish the pueblo for its crime. 

There ensued a struggle worthy the pen of the poet-captain 
of those years, the Seiior Villagran, for Vicente de Zaldivar 
reached the mesa with only seventy soldiers, in the latter part of 
January, 1599, and amid a hail of poisoned arrows mixed with 
winter winds and snows, won to its summit, step by step, until 
at length, arriving on a slender pinnacle, he leaped across its 
chasm direct into the town. Then began a fiercer onslaught, for 

[68] 



before the village yielded, Vicente and the remnant of his little 
company fought a three-day battle without ceasing, in the plaza, 
until the streets were shambles and the warriors "slipped in blood 
which, God in Heaven! might have been their own." "Matre 
de Dios! but your guide would give you his turquois could he 
have been there." 

This lesson cowed the pueblo for almost a hundred years, 
but in Santa Ana, 1680, the Acomans at last forgot the vision of 
Vicente in the plaza, sword in hand, receiving the subjugation 
of the dead and dying shamans, and led their sister towns in a 
great revolt to break forever the yoke of Spain and Rome. Fray 
Lucas Maldonado was their resident padre then, and him they 
flogged in the plaza and thonged to the altar rail while his little 
church was razed about him, finally, "por Dios, because he was 
yet alive," flinging him from the mesa to rot on the sands below. 

Whether it was, as your guide insists, because the padre's 
cassock spread like a parachute and bore his person to the ground 
in safety, or whether because of that heroic month of siege, where- 
with Diego de Vargas twelve years later took the town, Acoma 
thenceforward repented of her ways and accepted meekly of the 
will of Spain and Mexico. The church was rebuilded at the 
beginning of the century and "Tata Dios" worshiped there with 
becoming regularity until the death of Padre Lopez, who settled 
the little matter of the painting of San Jose; since when the 
pueblo has shaped its course according to the wishes of the 
Cacique at Washington. 

So your guide leaves the plaza with its age-old memories 
that he may show you the very place from which the flve men 
leaped, and the pinnacle from which Vicente and his troops sprang 
like so many mountain lions across the intervening chasm. The 
gap is fully ten feet wide, and the depth of it makes you dizzy 
even to contemplate, but you soon forget it, for from here the 
Enchanted Mesa is palely visible, rising a rainbow incense above 
the haze of yellow sands, and your guide has also a tale to 
tell of it. This rock, indeed, is the corner stone of his mystical 
leligion, the temple of Pa-yat-ya-ma, the Garden of the Moon, 
but it is not of these sacred things he speaks. For who are you, 
forsooth, that he should prattle of his faith? Do you believe in 

[69] 



Shi-pa-pu? Do you know where the Trues are living? Yet, 
although he be silent in these regards, his eyes grow soft and 
full of prayer as he looks at this rock of his spirit's dreams, and 
his voice is low and musical as he tells how, long ago, his people 
lived atop the Enchanted Mesa. One day, however, while the 
most were toiling in the fields below, the gods, for an impiety, 
destroyed the only trail, tumbling it all in ruins so that those on 
the crest could not come down nor those on the desert evermore 
return. Then the remnant of the Children of the Sun were full 
of mourning and builded their present city, the cloud-kissed 
Acoma, near by, that they might always have the mesa's silent 
admonition to walk in the path of the Trues with contrite hearts. 
And even yet of a nighttime, when the moon is at the full, the 
Acomans can hear above the dune winds on the mesa the voices 
of the "Other People" chanting lowly to their gods. 

You fain would stay and hear them, too, but the tour of the 
town is ended and you still have far to go. So, bidding good- 
bye to your guide, you stroll once more through the streets and 
plaza to the head of the village trail. The afternoon is waning 
into eventide. The western hills are in silhouette, limned at the 
crests with golden fire; the clouds above them, hanging low, are 
fringed with green and yellow feathers like the plumes that drape 
the altar of the dear earth-mother's shrine ; long, purple shadows, 
tinged with pink, splash here and there across the dunes; the 
western facades of the cliff burn redder than the sacred sun; 
and camp fires sparkle on the plain, gleaming like coyote eyes 
amid its pearly coverlet of dusk. Presently the sacristan climbs 
into the church's belfry and, when Pa-yat-ya-ma touches his 
shield to the horizon, the sweet-toned bells within it ring forth 
their vesper chimes. Above the film of thin, blue smoke, arising 
from the crooked chimneys, their melody floats out afar upon 
the desert, calling the people home to prayer, and one and all, these 
leave their tasks, their sports and other avocations to move like 
pilgrims toward the mesa's mellow stair of sand. Through the 
ethereal landscape, fragrant with the fall of dew, this motley 
caravan comes ever nearer as you descend the trail, until its 
fleeting, flashing press meets with you at the last and you stem its 
sea of faces that drift forever by. Men ahorseback, men afoot, 

[70] 



children with their bows and arrows, trains of burros, flocks 
of sheep, shamans, shepherd lads and lasses, in a steady stream 
they pass, crisscrossed and broken by the file of women mount- 
ing from the spring, who thread a way in stately grace with their 
great tinajas on their heads. But, at length the last of these 
has dipped her final gourd of azure water and the ultimate strag- 
gler, a tall, bronze youth, with a crimson breechclout at his 
loins, runs blithely past with a wave of the hand and a laughing 
farewell, "Adios." Then the sights and sounds grow indis- 
tinct, the brilliant raiment fades to drab, the voices and sheep 
bells call farther away, and the tail of the caravan vanishes into 
the twilight of the summit, leaving you solitary by the pool upon 
the desert, whose surface the cloud light kindles with an irides- 
cent oil. Above, the little village is veiled in silver mist ; below, 
the image of a star shines deep within the waters; beyond, 
the Enchanted Mesa lifts like a cameo, and over the sands there 
rustles the breath of a timid breeze. Adios it is, indeed, to the 
Pueblo of the Sun, and to its children gathered to their eyrie 
nest of dreams. 




[71] 




CHAPTER V. 




ON THE TRAIL OF THE CONQUISTADORS 
FROM ACOMA TO ZUNI 

EHIND the palisade of hills southwest of Acoma 
there lies an high plateau where the summer air 
blows chill with the tang of winter. This por- 
tion of God's Country is perched aloft, indeed, 
amid the regions held in fief by the hoarfrost and 
the hail ; and yet, it was not ever thus, for once 
long, long ago, it felt the heeltap of an harlot fire. 
Then its surface stratum was smooth, pink sand- 
stone, but volcanoes ruptured this with cones and overlaid it with 
a crust of pumice stone and lava, until it was invisible excepting 
at the edges, and the altered plateau ran in billows like an angry 
midnight sea. No doubt for a while thereafter this pavement 
was a waste, but so many years have melted in the crucible of 
time since it was spread, that now its creases are weatherworn 
with age and twine like old Chantilly lace among its mottled 
verdure. For copses of junipers and pinons grow on the cinder 
crests, ragged spruce trees straggle up the higher mountain sim- 
mits, creeping cacti adorn the fields of huge misshapen boulders, 
and gaunt pines fringe the margins of the many sunken craters, 
where limpid lakes lie mirroring the landscape round about and 



[72] 



the grass grows lush and fragrant, interspersed with reeds and 
flowers. By day these crystal waters are rippled by the breezes 
and the plumage of teals and terns, but in the twilight, when 
these birds have sought their nests among the tules, they flame 
with fire as of old, loaned for the nonce by the sunset sky. 

To the south this plateau changes to a wilderness of hills 
which tumble in confusion, boulder-scarred and forest-crowned, 







■^^' 



^ ^ '^■^^■: 



4f.i«L4|fc*^%>^ 



*";t.w^^«^ -It 






A ir.ATKi: I.AKK 



to the steppes of the San Augustine Plains. A band of Apache 
lurked among these fastnesses of yore, but now they are unten- 
anted of any but the deer and bear and other woodland creatures 
who range their coverts as they will, molested only by a chance, 
infrequent Acoman. But to the west is a tamer land ; for here 
the plateau precipice falls abruptly to a valley, some twenty 
miles in width and an hundred long. Opposite this rise the foot- 
hills of the Oso Range, which runs at right angles to it, and at its 



[73] 



head stand the San Mateo Mountains, whose snowy summits we 
could see from the roofs of Acoma. These volcanoes are nearer 
to us now than they were then, however, and play a more impres- 
sive part in the trail of our pilgrimage, for they have poured a 
twisted stream of lava down this valley which we must ford 
upon our way to Zuni. To the Navajo this lava is the River of 
Chez-zhin, for they think it the blood of the giant, Yeitso, killed 




THE TRAIL FROM ACOMA TO Zl KI 



by their twin-god heroes, Nayenezgani and his brother; and 
whatever its origin may have been, its appearance certainly fits 
this legend, for its red-black fossil torrent clogs well nigh all the 
valley, leaving only a narrow strip of herbage untouched at either 
side. Indeed, upon occasion, the maelstrom of its tides are 
jammed against the enclosing walls to a height of sixty feet, and 
since the lava of them is so twisted and so sharp that only the 
wily coyote can pick a passage through, Man of necessity must 
take a detour around. 



[74] 



Hither from Acoma comes the trail to Zuni, first climb- 
ing to the high plateau through a gap in the desert hills, thence 
crossing its pumice pavement, strewn with crater lakes and cin- 
der cones, to Cebolla Spring on the western side, where onion 
flowers and marigolds garland a pool of water cress, and finally 
entering a vale, down which it wanders through fields of corn, to 
the edge of the lava river. Here it must needs turn sharply- 
north and skirt the flood of rock for miles, seeking in vain for 








liKSIDK YOl- ItUNS THE LAVA 



a place to ford. This seems indeed a futile task, for mesquite 
bushes, chapparal, yucca, century plants and cacti grow every- 
where so rank upon it that its front presents a jungle of evil 
spikes and thorns, on which the sun beats down with blinding 
glare. As you journey, turkey buzzards whirl in circles over- 
head; underfoot, rattlesnakes flick their tongues and glide like 
gray-green shadows to the cover of their lairs ; roundabout, crows 
and blackbirds chatter in their raucous tones, and all the while 
beside you runs the interminable lava until, to escape it, you 



[7r,] 



conclude you must ascend the San Mateos. But at length this 
turbulent river becomes suddenly smooth and calm, its obsidian 
billows alter into gently swelling knolls, the cacti foam upon it 
withers, wilts and disappears, giving place in the end to a coarse, 
brown stubble, and the trail, after feeling of this to learn if it 
should be a snare, turns face about and boldly enters into its very 
midst. Yet it must still be wary, for this herbage is very thin, 
and ugly black ripples of lava break through it here and there, 
so it picks its way with caution, avoiding this and that abyss, 
until it finally emerges upon the farther shore beside the Mexican 
village of San Rafael. 

This little hamlet is wedged between the lava and a coigne 
of hill, an ugly, stony foreland barren of verdure and of shade, 
and is, if possible, more unattractive than its environment. For 
its houses are all of them squat adobes, and its lanes are refuse 
heaps. The church, which fronts its central plaza, alone makes 
a pretense to rise above this atmosphere of squalor, and does so 
only by means of its tipsy, wooden belfry, in which the bells are 
jangled completely out of tune. Indeed, were it not for the 
meadows which lie below the town in a bay of the valley the lava 
spared, nothing whatever would save San Rafael from its slat- 
tern decadence. But these at least are good and green, for Guay- 
mas Spring, which bubbles from a crevasse in the hill, gives freely 
to them of its flow, that they may keep their verdure fresh and 
tender through the year. 

Happily the people of San Rafael resemble their pastures 
more than their town, being merry of heart and free of hand, 
and as much the kin of God's Country as the pleasant Acomans. 
lor although they may be poor in cash they are rich in courtesy, 
and wear a pricely lineage on their patrician features which even 
their rags and their hovels can not hide. And this is as it should 
be, because, though they may be fallen from their rightful high 
estate, these folk are the descendants of the Conquistadors, and 
no ill fortune can rob them of this panoply of honor. Thus they 
are gentle, courteous and kind, as becomes the gallant motto of 
their quondam coat of arms, and will welcome you politely to the 
life of San Rafael with its pretty, threadbare masquerade of 
chivalry and romance. 

[76] 




UE.StKMJANTS OF TIIIC (.OM/l ISTAUOli.S 



[77] 



For the citizens of San Rafael have kept the sunny nature 
of the Conquistadors as well as their manners and some of their 
customs, so that existence in the village is a lifelong holiday. 
The seiioritas are pretty; the senors are cavaliers; the phrases 
of their language fall like ripe pomegranates from their lips, 
and their voices are like the music of a west wind among pines; 
so many a languishing hour of love is stolen from under the noses 
of the dons and the duennas, who, to do them justice, veil their 
eyes with the lashes of their vanished youth. "Con amor el 
mundo paso," ah, yes, in love runs the world away! So what 
matter the rags and the empty pockets, the adobe huts and the 
dirty lanes, for "so long as there be a man to fight, a maid to love, 
and a song to sing, why a fig for the padres and all their prayers." 
Bravo, brave Seiior Sol y Baca! With your flashing eyes, your 
waving hair, and your new serape, it is no wonder that you are 
the village minstrel and Gay Lothario, and dare, by reason of 
these titles, to snap your fingers at the old duennas. And look 
to it, you sefioras, that you follow the instructions implied in 
Seiior Baca's speech, and keep but a touch of thistle-down on the 
seiiorita's shoulders. For, "pish, Saint Peter meant a maid to 
wed, and you will have a grandchild soon to prattle at your 
knees." So go about your business and leave your daughters 
to sit and sew their marriage linen at the window whence, through 
the crimson flowers of the geraniums, they may catch a glimpse 
of their cavaliers. 

Nor are the duennas' days bereft of pleasure. They also 
have their pastimes which, lingual though they be, and retro- 
spective as becomes their age, are none the less enjoyable and 
enjoyed. One may see them of a morning chatting at the village 
spring, and in the afternoon they sit on the gossip bench by the 
wine shop door, smoking their cigarettes while they do their 
needlework. Here in the evening they also gather to chaperon 
impromptu "bailes," and there ensues in the plaza the twanging 
of guitars and the shuffling of dainty feet a-dancing the fandango. 
Amid these merrymakings of the endless game of love which, 
one and all, the San Rafaelites play, there are church fiestas, 
saint days, and summer village picnics, in which the entire popu- 
lation join with frolic, song and jest, and most important, hap- 

[78] 



piest of these is the great May Festival of the sheep, when the 
flocks are sheared of their fleece and dipped in the long tobacco 
vat. 

Then indeed does San Rafael arise in the heyday of the 
spring and whirl to the madcap measure of a fortnight's pas- 
toral. The village folk are all there, of course, and from mesa 
and mountain, far and near, come country cousins to swell the 
tide of their festivity, until the plaza is alive with laughing 
throngs in gay attire, the wine shop is crowded with spurred 
rancheros toasting the charms of their senoritas, and the houses 
are filled to overflowing with noisy company. Without the town 
also, as well as within it, all things are joyous and fair to see, 
for the sun has just married the month of May, and chosen the 
earth for his bridal bed. So the meadows are verdant with ten- 
der grasses, the orchards are fragrant and pink with bloom, th? 
spring has a chaplet of ferns and lilies, the marshes are sprinkhd 
with pussy willows, and the lava river is aflame with crimson 
cactus blossoms. The San Mateos alone dare wear their winter 
mantles of gleaming snow amid this tissue of green brocade, but 
even these are so threadbare now that the jagged rocks beneath 
have slashed their folds with purple velvet and seamed their edges 
to the slopes of dark, impenetrable pine with groves of budding 
quaking aspen. Nay, more; the fretwork of these trees runs 
through the forest like cloths of gold to the combe of the valley, 
where they fade before the uplands of sage, which ring the land- 
scape round, and toss their perfume to each passing breeze, that 
it may bear this with it to the village when it blows the first glad 
tidings thither of the coming of the sheep. 

Jose Angel, the sacristan, waits for these in the belfry of 
the little church, whence he can see over the meadows and beyond 
the coigne of hill, but many breezes come and go, nor bring the 
tinkle of the bells to his attentive ears. Indeed, the morning 
wears to noon, and the noon to eventide, and still no echo save that 
of the laughter beneath in the plaza disturbs the sacristan. Ah, 
well, thinks he when the dusk has come with its afterglow of lilac 
haze, they will arrive tomorrow, and prepares to descend with 
unconcern to his belated supper, for Jose Angel has compassed 
his four-score years and ten, so that a tomorrow more or less is but 

[79] 



a little matter. But, hark, what was that? The creak of the 
ladder? The rustle of leaves in a cotton wood tree? Perhaps, 
but Jose Angel turns and listens with his hand upon the rope of 
the rusty chimes. Presently, nearer and clearer, the tinkle is 
repeated and there is no mistaking the purport of it now. 
"Neighbors, neighbors," Jose shouts, "the sheep are here," and 
drowns his voice in a clarion peal which announces to the village 
that its festival has begun. 

At once all doors are opened wide, and dancing, shouting, 
clapping their hands, the people hurry to the plaza. Yet not 




■nilO KIItST FI.OCK ICNTKUS -nil: I.ANIO 



until the stars appear does Jose Angel still the clanging welcome 
of his bells and lean from the belfry to taste the air. "How 
many camp fires?" he is asked so soon as his head appears. "One, 
three, four, seven!" he answers, and would point to where their 
glimmer furbishes the dark, but the populace have no mind to 
wait. "Seven," they cry, "a lucky number. Tomorrow there 
will be seventy, and each night more and more," and joining arms 
they circle the square in a ring-around-the-rosy. Then off they 
trip to the wine shop to witness the lotteiy, which will decide the 
precedence of the flocks for the entire shearing, retiring after- 
wards to their homes to snatch an hour or two of slumber. 



[80] 



For the morning is but half awake when the first flock enters 
the lane, which runs between the emerald pastures and moves 
with much confusion, two thousand strong, toward the plaza. 
It is Sehor Sol y Baca's herd, for he it was who won the drawing, 
and the sehor himself rides at its head on a prancing chestnut 
charger. His bridle is heavy with silver trimmings, his saddle 
leather is embossed, and he is attired in chaparejos, inlaid spurs, 
a tall sombrero with filigree fringe, and a new serape patterned 
from the colors of the rainbow. Perceiving him in this fancy 
garb — high-spirited, mettlesome, debonair — for a moment one 
might mistake him for a Conquistador, and it was thus indeed 
his ancestors rode to Guaymas Spring with Coronado, a smile on 
their lips, a sword in their hand, and a salutation for all the 
world. So it is no wonder the blackbirds, with their breasts of 
molten gold, carol a greeting to him from the fences as he rides 
by, and no wonder the townsfolk gather to await his cavalcade. 
On he comes with a nonchalant, devil-may-care expression in his 
laughing eyes, and his flock follows after with noisy bleatings, 
driven blindly ahead in a cloud of dust by two swarthy herders 
who walk behind. Now and then a shaggy, crop-eared dog will 
dart from the melee in hue and cry after a lamb who, with tail 
a-wriggle, has slipped through the bars of a pasture gate, or 
circle some cross lane to prevent the obstinate wethers from run- 
ning away. Nothing, however, stays the course of Sehor Baca 
and his flock until they have entered the village, traversed it 
from end to end, w^hile the senoritas shower them with compli- 
ments and flowers, and are finally shut within the corral of the 
village shearing pen. 

Then Sehor Baca's hour of jubilee is past and the yearly 
penance of his sheep begins. For, within this shearing pen and 
open platform, roofed over from the sun, the shearers are await- 
ing with their sharp shears in their hands, ready to rush from 
cover and fleece the frightened sheep directly the senor signals 
that the gate is closely barred. This is not long forthcoming; 
the senor waves his hand, there is a dash, a scurry in and out 
among the flock, and each of the shearers returns to the pen with 
the bleating trophy of his chase. Ten minutes more and, car- 
rambas! the first poor ewe is shorn, the senor marks a tally 

[81] 



against the shearer's name, tosses the fleece to the wool bag which 
dangles in the center, and, presto, before the boy within can 
stamp it firmly underfoot another ewe is feeling the snip of the 
shears about her withers. For these shearers are paid by the 




I III: >]ii.\KiM 



head, and so they waste no time in conversation, since the more 
sheep they shear in a day the more centavos can they spend in 
the wine shop of an evening. Besides, there is other work afoot 
which may not be delayed, and yet a greater penance for the 
complaining sheep. For so soon as each ewe is shorn, she with 
her lamb is chased to the vat and prodded into it head foremost. 



[82] 




TllK IMA NCK INTO THE VAT 



[83] 



This vat is sixty feet in length and filled with a boiling mixture 
of sulphur and tobacco, a medicine intended to eradicate disease, 
and through this the ewe and her lamb must swim, however much 
protesting, for the gate to their next year's pasture opens at the 
farther end. 

All day, for many days, this vat and the pen beside it are a 
mill of bleating sheep and shouting men; all night for many 
nights the town resounds to the twanging of guitars and the 




IN TlIK \ AT 



clicking heels of dancers; for after Seiior Baca's flock is driven 
from the big corral, hundreds of others enter it in their allotted 
order. But at length the final band arrives, pays in its toll of 
wool and swims its way to a twelvemonth's freedom. Then the 
vat is emptied, the pen is closed and the festival is over. 

San Rafael, however, is loath to lose the cause of its merry- 
making, so that evening a farewell baile is given the visitors in 
the plaza. Preparations for this have been under way in the 
kitchens for several hours, and now, at dusk, the seiioritas carry 



[84] 



their contributions of cakes and pinochea to the wine shop and 
hasten home again to rifle the family chests of their finest wares. 
Priceless mantillas, brocaded gowns, embroidered stockings and 
velvet slippers perfumed with memories of old Spain, are pulled 
from these and arranged to the taste of the duennas, who can 
trace the history of every garment back for several generations. 
Then the old-fashioned combs and jewels are removed from their 
sandalwood boxes and pinned in masses of raven hair or hung 




llli; (lATK TO NEXT YKAll'S rASTlUE 



upon gleaming shoulders, and the senoritas are ready to greet 
their waiting cavaliers. These stand without, attired in their 
richest velvet trousers, their laciest shirts and their brightest 
sashes, and when the moon rises, resolving the shadows into a 
tissue of filigree silver, the couples trip to the plaza, arm in arm, 
but chaperoned by the presence of an elderly duenna. "Con amor 
el mundo paso," presently the tune begins and continues to the 
play of feet and glances whirling in the maze of the waltz, fan- 
dango and contra dansa until the dawn steals over the moun- 



[85] 



tains to brush the mists from the village meadows. Then the 
"maestro del baile" begs the ladies' pardon for the prematurity 
of the day and leads the way into the wine shop, where, ready 
filled, the glasses stand in a row upon the counter. "Senors," 
he cries, and each cavalier raises his wine-red toast on high, "to 
the senoritas, and San Rafael grant us good grazing through the 
year." An hour after, when the sun sweeps the plaza clear of 
the night's carouse, you may possibly discover in the shadow of 
a wall the recumbent form of some paisano who feted himself 
more often than the wine cask deemed wise, or hear the bleat of 
an orphan lamb searching the town for its vanished mother, but, 
saving such, nor sight nor sound disturbs the quiet of San Rafael. 
For the herders and rancheros have scattered to the mountains 
to pick up the trail of their fleeing flocks, and since the village 
will need a week to drowse itself free of its flesta, perhaps, it 
were best for us to follow after. 

The dew still glistens on the grass, but it is pranked with 
the print of many hoofs and, when we turn the coigne of hill 
beneath which San Rafael is set, we perceive the hindmost mem- 
ber of this fugitive cavalcade. The others are already out of 
sight behind a bend in Zuni Cafion whose gap invites us to its 
shade a mile or two beyond, but this solitary horseman seems 
not a whit dismayed at their precipitate desertion. Instead, he 
sits his saddle with the graceful ease of one for whom the moment 
is all in all, allowing his pony to choose its gait and toying with 
the melody of a folk song as he rides, as if daring the sunshine 
to prove itself more light of heart than he. As we approach 
there is something reminiscent in his manner. That flick of the 
foot in its tapadero, that shrug of the shoulders, that toss of the 
head, we have surely met with these before. Can it possibly be 
— why of course it is — the Seiior Sol y Baca. Buenas dias, 
Senor, and whither do you ride alone and singing on this bright 
May morning? To your rancherria del Tinaja? Across the 
mountains? On El Morro Plain? Then a blessing on Saint 
Estevan, for our roads are joined in one. But come, let us hasten 
to reach the pines before the sun entangles us in the lasso of his 
beams, for the noon will be hot and the miles to Tinaja are very 
many and rough withal. 

[8G] 




FOHESTS OF I'FilMKVAI, PINE 



[87] 



Thus, in Senor Sol y Baca's pleasant company, we ride the 
round of a fragrant day, leaving the valley of San Rafael with its 
fair, green meadows and lava river through the narrow portal of 
Zuni Carion, and climbing thence, through forests of primeval, 
yellow pine to the highest crest of the Oso Range. The long 
trail, dappled with sun and shade, runs over meads of brilliant 
flowers, splashes through brooks, rattles over stones, drinks of 
a waterfall, hides among brambles, and, growing steeper all the 
while, emerges at length on the summit, whence we can see 
behind us the San Mateo Mountains, the high plateau and the 
rainbow haze of the desert of Acoma, and before us the expanses 
of an undiscovered country whose bourne is mingled with the far 
horizon. Ah, what visions of empire must have gathered in 
Coronado's eyes, when he stood upon this turret of God's Country 
long ago! The privations and disappointments he had already 
undergone must have seemed indeed but a paltry price to pay for 
the conquest of such a land, whose very texture shone more rich 
than the walls of the Alhambra, and like them held, no doubt, an 
even finer wealth within. So at least thinks the Seiior Baca as 
he points you here and yon, now revealing the peak of the Cerro 
del Oro behind Cebolla Mountain, and now naming the craters 
which rise beside the ultimate shore of the lava river. 

It is late, however, so Senor Baca is chary of his information, 
and, springing again on his pony, he rides down the western slope 
to the confines of a grove of giant spruce. Here he stops, peers 
timidly ahead, and then, presumably satisfied, spurs hurriedly 
into the forest's midst. Nor can you blame his hesitation, for 
the dark green foliage of these trees is interlaced so thickly that 
the pale blue sky is hid, and what little sunshine filters through 
is tarnished into twilight, so that for awhile even you forbear to 
pass the threshold of this cloister, doubtful as to what danger may 
be lurking in its shade. Within, however, you but find a bed 
of scented moss, sprinkled with yellow violets that sparkle like 
tiny stars, and withal this verdant carpet is soft and silent to the 
tread ; the fragrance of it, you would think, forbids all thought 
of harm. Yet, Seiior Baca shares not this opinion, for he wraps 
his cloak about him as if the day were chill, and urges his horse 
the faster with each ensuing moment. Forsooth, one meeting 

[88] 



with him now would never take him to be the same gay, singing 
cavalier who rode at our flanks through the morning as happy as 
a lark. Fear certainly sits behind him, whispering in his ear 
and bidding him use his quirt upon his pony's steaming flanks. 

Shall we ask him the cause thereof? But hark, there is 
no longer any need, for did you not hear that single note played 
on a reed pipe in the cafion yonder? And do you know what 
it announces? The presence of the Penitentes — that Mexican 




THi: KOIiKST (IK THK I'ENITKNTES 



order, damned by the church, of flagellant fanatics who roam 
these mountains in twilight and dark, flaying their naked bodies 
with poisonous cactus spikes, and crucifying a brother on each 
Good Friday morn in blind, besotted memory of Him of Calvary. 
Now, indeed, is the Sehor's haste made clear, for should they see 
one near their camp, God's wounds, the death he dies! Hush! 
Listen! There it is again, that shrill, soul-piercing strain upon 
the pipe, and nearer, too — yes, nearer — there — behind that 
boulder! Baca! Baca! Where is he? Gone? Then we are 



[89] 



alone. Oh, ride faster, faster, for see, the sun has all but set. 
What's that? Can you hear them coming? Eh? No? The 
trees? Yes, yes, 'tis growing cold. What of the trees? Are 
ended, you say? Why, so they are. Then we are free of the 
mountain and safely on the plain. 

Nay, better yet, for who can tell but the Penitentes are pur- 
suing? We have ridden into the patio of the rancherria del Tin- 
aja, so called from a natural basin in the mountain's side near by, 
where the Conquistadors used to fill their journey jars with water, 
and there is Seiior Baca himself sitting awaiting us in the lighted 
doorway, with a friendly smile on his lips once more, and a good 
excuse for his desertion. It seems he thought best to ride ahead 
and warn his people of our approach, since strangers arriving 
after dark are looked upon here with — well, suspicion. Ah, 
indeed, say we, it is little wonder. But no matter, we can forgive 
the fib because of the warmth of the Senor's greeting. For, 
doffing his sombrero, he bows until its brim touches the earth 
as he sweeps it by, exclaiming, "Pray enter your house, sehors." 

Nor is the speech empty of intent, coming from the heart, 
as we soon discover. For, directly we have washed ourselves at 
the pump spout in the yard, we are bidden to supper, and the 
table is heaped with every delicacy known to Mexican housewife's 
larder. The senora, to whom we are not presented (for this 
would be a breach of custom ) , serves the meal herself, receiving 
each dish of chilli con carne, tortillas or onions at the kitchen 
door, that she may do us the honor of first tasting it to learn if 
it be prepared in the proper fashion. The Seiior Baca, however, 
dines with us, and a more charming host we would have to travel 
far to find. For he has a store of anecdote and persiflage at his 
command, and even the sefiora's eyes are not more quick than his 
to note a glass or plate that needs refilling. And would you have 
music? Peste, where is that lazy, good for nothing Beppo? Let 
him come hither and make us merry with a lively air on his 
guitar, for 'tis a hard ride over the mountains, eh? and guests 
do not grow on the sagebrush at the rancherria del Tina j a. But 
guests, however rare they may be, are very much like other men, 
so the odds are it will be early to bed, whither your host will con- 
duct you with a caraffe and a candle. 

[90] 



When you open your casement, the morrow's morning, the 
crystals of an hoarfrost may glisten on the sill, for this plain, 
like the plateau, is higher than are many famous mountains, but 
other than this and the snap in the air, the out of doors will 




THE nASIN OF TINAJA 



sparkle with the verdure of the spring. To the north the moun- 
tain rises, its forest of spruce and pine caught in the mesh of a 
silver mist; to the east, where the lava river flows toward the 
San Augustine Plains, a line of cinder cones burns red against the 
pale, dawn-tinted sky; to the south the sagebrush meadows roll 
to a range of crumpled hills, and westward, great, hulking mesas 



[91] 



break the vision with their cliffs. The low adobe casa of the 
rancherria del Tinaja hides under the lip of the mountain from 
the fragrant tide of sage, which beats its grey-green billows to 
the lintel of the door, and seems inordinately small amid these 
distances and heights, whose lure the birds and the sheep bells 
sing, bidding you come among them, and chase the winds away. 
So Senor Baca's request to tarry falls upon inattentive ears, and 
immediately after breakfast you bid him "adios" to ride to the 
finest monument of the Conquistadors, El Morro or Inscription 
Rock, which lifts its facade from among the gleaming western 
mesas. 

This is a cliff of creamy sandstone that juts from the crop 
of a rolling hill and rises, pointed like the prow of a mighty ship, 
two hundred feet or more above the plain. Broadside, however, 
it appears, as its Spanish name implies, like a mediaeval fortress, 
and, if the fancy be in play, the eagles which roost on its jagged 
crest, do duty for the tower watch. At its base an half-dozen 
pines, gaunt, storm-wracked trees, make a grove of shade, and 
some stunted junipers which have won a precarious footing in a 
cleft, twine their lacery of olive green about the birth of a tiny 
spring that trickles from its wall. But, approaching the rock 
from Tinaja, these details are unnoticed, for one's view of it is 
from the front, whence it has the contour and motion of the 
Flying Victory. Indeed, it fairly breasts the foam of sage upon 
the plain and cleaves the air until the clouds above it soar like 
wings, while the mingled lights and shadows on its spreading 
walls behind weave in and out like draperies caught in the current 
of its flight. 

Of a truth, the beauty of El Morro Rock abides, but it is not 
for this that those who know it value it the most. To such it is 
dear for what it is, and not for what it seems, and it is a precious 
parchment of God's Country's history. For wherever the beet- 
ling cliffs protect its lower walls from weather, the Conquistadors 
have written in shorthand, as it were, the thrilling chapter of 
their conquest, cutting the characters into the rock with their 
Toledo daggers. In reading the entries, however, one must 
always bear in mind that those who wrote them were quite un- 
conscious of their excellence. Indeed, they would have laughed 

[92] 




KL MOHUO liOfK 



[93] 



to think that the time would ever come when the world would 
cherish their unpremeditated files. For, to them this rock was 
merely a central camping place, conveniently set on the road 
between Santa Fe and Mexico, and its walls but a pillar on which 
to post the items of common interest. Hence, they neither knew 
nor valued the worth of their fragmentary records, and perhaps 
it is this atmosphere of initial unconcern which renders these the 
finest memorial to their chivalry. 

"Paso por aqui el adelantado don Jua de Oiiate al descubri- 
mento de la mar del sur a' 16 de Abril ao 1605." 

"There passed by here the officer, Don Juan de Oiiate, to the 
discovery of the sea of the South on the 16th of April in the year 
1605." 

This is one of the entries upon El Morro Rock and one whose 
sentences bespeak imperishable deeds. Yet, mind you, within 
them there is no trace of braggadocio, for men of Don Ohate's 
mould are chary of their words. This "officer," as he calls him- 
self, had already founded the cities of Sante Fe and San Gabriel 
de los Espanjoles — the last the second, and the first the third in 
point of precedence within the United States — had equipped 
their colonists at his own expense, had received the homage of 
Acoma and the Rio Grande tribes, held the title of Governor of 
God's Country direct from the King of Spain, and was accounted 
truly great in an age when men were keen of praise; yet he 
mentions not one of these honors in this record he chiseled here 
on that April day two years before the settlement of Jamestown 

— this record, in which he announces with naive simplicity that 
he has gone to discover the North Pacific Ocean. Thus we may 
conclude that if Ofiate had had no need for this advertisement it 
would not have been written, but his need for it was great. He 
and his fifty companions — for he scarcely had more than that, 
since most of his troops were left to guard the colonists at Santa 
Fe — were strangers to God's Country, neither knowing of its 
nature nor the perils it might hide, and they were setting forth 
upon an uncertain expedition to find the whereabouts — just think ! 

— of the greatest sea on earth. For all they knew, the shores 
of this might be over yonder hill, or they might be more than ten 
thousand leagues away — an ignorance which was at once their 

[94] 




THE BEAl TY OF EL MOHItO HOCK AHIDKS 



[95] 



danger and incentive. Upon the route old enemies and new might 
arise to strike them, water might fail, their beasts might die, a 
pestilence might overtake them. Thus it was likely, more than 
probable, that none of them would survive unto the end, and, 
while they were free of fear, they had no raw audacity, so they 
cut their purpose on El Morro that others passing it might learn 
the whither they had gone, or if such be, the reason why they did 
not return. 

The other entries upon El Morro — and there are many 
above, below and beside Don Juan de Ohate's — were written in 
a similar stress of doubtful circumstances, but almost all of them 
reveal, although often rather incompletely, what purposes con- 
veyed their writers hither. There is the one of "Ensign Don 
Joseph de Payba Basconzelos," a name which rings like a sword 
on steel, who "brought the town council of the kingdom" to Santa 
Fe, "at his own expense, on the 18th of February, 1726," the one 
of "Diego Martin Barba," who wrote that "the Lieutenant-Colonel 
and Captain Juan de Arechuleta, himself and Ensign Augustin 
de Ynojos passed by here in the year 1636," but forgot to add 
their destination ; and the one which states that "in the year 1716, 
on the 29th of August, there passed by here Don Feliz Martinez, 
Governor and Captain General of the Kingdom, to the reduction 
and conquest of the Moqui Indians, and in his company," we are 
glad to learn, "was the Reverend Father Fray Antonio Camargo, 
Custodian and Judge Ecclesiastic." Near by is the signature of 
the first bishop who came into the land, "the most illustrious Sir 
Doctor Don Martin de Elizaecohea, Bishop of Durango," who 
"reached here on the 28th day of September, 1737," and under- 
neath the signature of "his comrade and secretary, the Bachelor 
of Arts, Don Ignacio de Arasain." Overlapping this last is the 
crooked scrawl, signed by "Lujan," a common soldier, which 
informs us that "They passed by here on the 23d of March of 
1632 to the avenging of the death of the Father Letrado," who 
had been a missionary to the treacherous Zuni Indians. The 
earliest entry is merely a name, "Pedro Romero, 1580." The 
only boastful ones concern the "Governor Don Francisco Manuel 
de Silva Nieto," a name sufficient in itself to flare like a trumpet 
through the ages, who among other flamboyant accomplishments, 

[96] 



"carried the Faith to Zuni," and "put the Zunis at peace at their 
own request." And no honor, either, to him for that, for anyone 
possessing such an armored patronymic might cow a far braver 
enemy than these dastardly pueblans, but let us hope, for the Gov- 
ernor's sake, that these testimonials to his bravery were chiseled 
by some devoted subordinate, and were not the result of his per- 
sonal pride. It little matters, however, for there is another 
entry here, which dims the tarnished luster of Nieto's with a 
blazon of pure gold. It is the most important of all, and reads : 
"Here was the General, Don Diego de Vargas, who conquered for 
our Holy Faith and for the royal crown of Spain all of New 
Mexico at his own expense in the year of 1692." El Morro. 
indeed, contains the name of no gentler or braver gentleman, 
for Vargas was the Bayard of the Conquistadors. After the 
Great Revolt of Santa Ana, 1680, when all of the Spaniards were 
either killed or driven from God's Country, it was he alone who 
dared to try to conquer it once more — dared even to risk his 
private fortune in the venture — and he won it, the whole of it, 
mile by mile, with his sword and his clemency. Beside this 
epitaph to greatness is the most pathetic entry, one which bears 
no annual date, "Soy de mano de Felipe de Arellano a 16 de 
Setiembre, soldado." "I am from the hand of Philip of Arellano, 
a common soldier." History records no otherwheres so short 
and stirring a biography. 

These are not all of the entries upon El Morro Rock. There 
are others whose orthography forbids interpretation, others 
which have been erased in part by centuries of weather, and 
others not pertaining to the Conquistadors, but written by vandals 
to their enduring shame. But these, which are quoted, are suffi- 
cient to reveal the magnificent memorial which the whole of them 
compose; and besides, these are, each of them, so full of quaint 
abbreviation, quainter grammar, quaintest spelling, that they will 
have taken what time we can spare from our pilgrimage to 
decipher. So, let us leave the others until another visit, and 
ride again upon our way in the hope that we may prove our lives 
to be a worthy counterpart of those whose names are chiseled 
here — the first and finest of God's Country's gentlemen. 



[97] 




CHAPTER VI. 



IN ZUNI, THE PUEBLO ON THE 
PLAIN OF CIBOLA 




HE road from El Morro Rock to Zuni is 
empty of interest, so let us, for the nonce, 
dispense with all itinerary, and, placing 
owl quills under our tongues, as the Zuni 
witches do, wish ourselves thither, and 
be whisked away. 

Nor, disregarding its convenience, is 
this manner of approach a poor one to 
employ on this occasion, for Zuni is situated in a land of mystery. 
The village, which is twice and again as large as Acoma, rises 
through many terraces to an high peak in the center, and is 
tethered to a knoll beside a shallow, muddy river, so that its 
eminence is visible afar. Yet the pueblo appears to be both very 
small and frail, for around it lies an undulating prairie whose 
prospect has no end, a sagebrush sea whose gray-green tides tug 
at the moorings of the knoll until it is tossed on their fragrant 
swell like a bit of pearly flotsam. Indeed, so vast is the expanse 
of earth and air about the town that Zuni is all but lost amid their 
sheer immensity, and as by day this prairie trembles with an effer- 



[98] 



vescent heat, and the moon by night trails over it a mesh of silver 
beams, the town is always partially hidden in a circumambient 
haze. Nor is there more than a single cape on the shores of this 
palpitant ocean of light toward which the pueblo can turn for 
protection, for the hillocks to the south and west are wedded with 
the prairies' sweep, the rugged bluffs to the north dissolve in utter 
wreckage on the plain, and only to the east there fronts the town 
in gracious majesty, Towa Yal-lanne, the Mountain of Corn, the 




ON rilK UIJOFS OK ZlNl 



sacred mesa of the Zunians. It it a long, high cliff with a slightly 
concave outline, and rising boldly from the hazy plain impresses 
one most with its solidity. Between the top and the bottom layers 
of rock, which are a wine-red sandstone, runs a broad band of 
pure white, which glistens like a mirror in the sun. The crest 
is clothed in a wood of cedars, and from its side juts out one 
slender pinnacle, the seat of the Zuni God of War, the triplex 
prongs of which point over to the sky. Around this mesa revolves 
the religious life of Zuni, and so it contains a legion of little 
shrines. Some of these are caves in the walls, others are ledges 



[99] 



on the summit, and a few are hidden beneath boulders at its 
base. So well are these concealed that a stranger can seldom 
discover them, but should one be so lucky, their very simplicity 
protects them from all harm. They contain no images, unless 
the odd-shaped pebbles can be considered such, and the only 
articles of service placed within are the votive offerings of meal 
and corn, and the pahoes or sticks of prayer. These pahoes are 
the prettiest little emblems. They are fashioned of a bit of luka 
reed about six inches long, which is wrapped in native white 
woolen cord to which is attached a turquois or wampum bead, 
and have at the end a tassel of eagle's-down. The suppliant says 




DISTANT VIEW OF ZUNI 



his prayers to it, while holding it in his hand, then he sticks it in 
the sand floor of the shrine, sprinkles a bit of pollen round, and 
goes rejoicing on his way, serene in the faith that the gentle winds 
will hear the feather repeating his litany, and straightway bear 
his message to the gods. 

In the past Yal-lanne had other occupants than the deities, 
for in troublous times, when the Apaches or Spaniards threatened 
an attack, the Zunis abandoned their homes on the plain and took 
refuge on the mesa's top. It has been two centuries now since 
they last lived here, but the walls of their fortress can still be 
traced, though they have tumbled completely down, and are over- 
grown with cactus thickets. The ultimate occasion of their 

[100] 



coming was the murder of two Spaniards who failed to comply 
with the Zuni marriage laws. 

But this is not the only crisis in which Spain bore a part for 
the history of the Zunis is closely related to the Conquistadors. 
Their cities — for then there were seven of them — were the first 
pueblos seen by any white man, Fray Marcos of Niza visiting them 
in 1539. It was his glowing report of these cities of Cibola, as 
they were called, which led Mendoza, the viceroy of Mexico, to 
send an expedition to the North, and when Coronado came in 1540, 




ZrXI EARLY CHRISTIAN CHrUCH 



it was to find the cities of Cibola and possess himself of the gold 
and jewels of their inhabitants. Thenceforth, the Zunis were in 
constant contact with the Spaniards during both peace and war. 
Churches were built, Franciscan missionaries resided among 
them, and part of the time they were under the rule of Spanish 
officers. During the turmoil of the succeeding century, the origi- 
nal seven cities were each one either abandoned or destroyed, and 
the present town of Zuni was built between the year of the Great 
Revolt and 1699, when there is a record of its having been visited 
by Governor Cubero. Just when it was built we have no authen- 

[101] 



tic knowledge, but it was probably in 1692, for the Zunis remained 
on Towa Yal-lanne for twelve years after the Great Revolt. 

In this, as in all other episodes, the Zunis bore a leading part. 
The account of it by Tumaka, a native Zunian (page 287, 23d 
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology), impresses as the 
truth: "After the old church was built at Itiwanna, a Spanish 
priest resided permanently at the village. After a time the 
Zunis came to believe that they were to be destroyed by the Span- 
iards, and they planned a revolt. They told all their women and 
children to refrain from attending services on a certain day, and 
the men, providing themselves with bows and arrows, which they 
hid under their blankets, started for the church. The leader of 
this revolt was the keeper of the great shell, who said that he was 
not afraid, as he had plenty of medicine to destroy the enemy. 
The Indians found only a few Spaniards in the church. They 
locked the doors and killed all but the priest and one other, who 
escaped through the roof. The priest was stripped of his vest- 
ments and made to wear Zuni dress. The keeper of the great 
shell declared that it would be best to return to Towa Yal-lanne 
to protect themselves better from the enemy. 

"While on Towa Yal-lanne, they noticed one night a fire in 
the distance and several men, perhaps six, were sent to find out 
what it meant. A party of Laguna Indians had made the fire, 
and they told the Zunis that in a short time many Spaniards and 
many Indians would attack them. The Zunis returned with the 
news and were again dispatched to the Lagunas, who joined the 
party of the Zunis. The Lagunas said that they had been com- 
pelled to accompany the Spaniards in their march against the 
Zunis, but had escaped. They were instructed by the Zunis to 
fill hides with water and not to touch water from any spring in 
the Zuni country, as they would all be poisoned, and also to take 
a bit of cedar twig into their mouths to protect them from the 
poisoned shells which would be shot by the keeper of the shell. 
When the enemy was discovered approaching, the keeper of the 
great shell and his deputy were in their house ; three times they 
were called upon to come out and help their people, but they did 
not appear. When they were called the fourth time and came 
forward, the enemy was well up the mesa. The keeper and his 

[102] 



deputy were nude, except for a breechcloth; their bodies and 
limbs were painted red, and they had anklet and wristlet wreaths 
of yucca. The face of each was painted black, the forehead and 
chin covered with eagle down, and a red, fluffy eagle plume was 
tied to the scalp-lock. They had been preparing medicine, which 
had to be obtained on the mesa, and therefore could not appear 
sooner. Each filled a tiny shell with the medicine, put the shell 
into his mouth, and approached the edge of the mesa unarmed. 




ZUNI ON THE RI\ Kl 



The people were alarmed and cried to them not to advance. They 
said, 'We are not afraid.' They blew the shells containing the 
medicine toward the enemy, who were immediately affected by 
it. At first the enemy appeared to be intoxicated. One would 
try to catch the other as he fell, and then both would stagger and 
soon fall. Nearly the whole army was destroyed. The surviv- 
ors retreated. All the Rio Grande pueblos, except the Lagunas, 
fought the Zunis. Those of the Lagunas who accompanied the 
Spaniards, did not shoot an arrow. About six months after this 



[103] 



attack the Lagunas again appeared and made a fire, and infor- 
mation was given to the Zunis that another attack was expected. 
The keeper of the shell prepared his medicine, but the Spanish 
priest, who was still with them, being anxious to prevent further 
destruction of the Spaniards, looked about for something on which 
to send a message. He finally wrote with charcoal on a piece of 
deerskin, saying that he was safe and that he loved the Zunis and 
wished to remain with them, and threw it down the mesa side, 




Zl MS' MOST SACKKL) .SHlilXK — THK CKNTKli OK THK KAKIH 



calling to the Spaniards to receive it. After the message was 
read and the Spaniards learned of the safety of their priest, they 
made no attack, but sent clothing and other things to him." 

No doubt this is what happened, although Diego de Vargas 
was probably more impressed by the deerskin message than he 
was by the medicine shell, providing he was aware of its exist- 
ence. This shell is still preserved by the high priest of Zuni 
anent some future onslaught of a foe ; so be discreet during your 
sojourn there, lest you also become intoxicated, and you will have 
need of all your intuition, for Zuni is part of the prairie's mystery. 

[104] 



Around the town, which is itself a shrine, so honeycombed 
is it with altars and temples, lies a magic ring of lesser sanctu- 
aries. Approaching it from Towa Yal-lanne, one enters this 
outer circle at "the Center of the Earth" — a small subterranean 
chamber, six feet square, which is capped by a smaller apartment, 
two feet high, contrived of loose stones and covered by a slab. 
This aperture is the womb of the world in Zuni mythology, and 
from it all manner of life is supposed to have come. At present 
it is the abode of the Gods of the Rain, and is used in connection 
with their ceremonies. From "the Center of the Earth," the path 
leads down to the sluggish river, across its shallow, thinly moist- 
ened bed, thence past the tiny gardens fenced with adobes, and 
so into the village. 

The difference from Acoma is marked. The streets are 
narrow and tortuous, the plazas are small and hidden away, and 
the houses are very high. They are built in tiers, so that each 
story is somewhat smaller than the story below, and has an uncov- 
ered terrace round about it; and as the foundation for each 
house is a solid rock, and the number of its terraces is five and 
sometimes six, each one is, in fact, a community by itself, con- 
taining thirty rooms or more, each one the dwelling of a family. 
The walls of these pyramidal apartments are of stone plastered 
over with whitewashed mud; but, except in this minor detail, 
their construction is identical with that pursued at the pueblo 
of Acoma. As in the City of the Clouds, one ascends by means 
of ladders or serrated extensions of the walls. 

These innumerable ladders and the maze of terraces rising 
so high above the narrow lanes, the procession of people coming 
up or down the shining walls, the long, protruding rafters, the 
myriad of crazy chimney pots which are merely broken cooking 
crockery piled one atop another, the oven domes, the veins of thin 
blue smoke curling in spirals into the clear blue sky, the indefin- 
able essence of them all make Zuni seem a summer-day mirage, 
a dream city born of the prairie heat, which, in spite of the bustle 
everywhere within it, will fade away like a sunset cloud. An air 
of intangible mystery hovers around it, filling the stranger within 
it with awe. Every house has a secret chamber, every nook 
hides a sacred altar. One hears the fall of unseen feet, the muf- 

[105] 



fled tones of unknown voices. Doors that were there but a 
moment before, of a sudden disappear; people you meet on an 
open terrace, brush by you and are gone. You look in vain ; they 
seem to have melted into the atmosphere. In the streets, in the 
covered alleys, in the plazas, and most especially in the square 
where stands the old, dilapidated church, shadows are always 
flitting through the sunlight and crooning gently at kiva entrances. 

These kivas, too, are most mysterious. They are the under- 
ground temples of the gods, square excavations dug deep into the 
earth, walled and floored with plastered stones, and having a 
tiny hatchway in the faggot roof, down which a ladder runs. 
There are perhaps twenty-five kivas in Zuni, which supplement 
the many sacred rooms in the diff'erent houses, and are used by 
the priests for the most secret of their ceremonies. In each there 
is a cupboard beneath the flags, a strange appointed altar on 
which are painted wooden idols and a charcoal fire which never, 
never dies. Indeed, so precious are these purple flames that did 
the Zunis flee to Towa Yal-lanne tomorrow, the coals of these fires 
would accompany them. They were lighted by the gods in the 
long ago, in that far-away land from whence the Zunis came, 
and only so long as they shall burn will the present world endure. 

The Zuni religion is very beautiful, but we can not do more 
than touch upon it here, for the gods are legion and are present 
everywhere. Their faith is a nature worship, a polytheism of 
nature deities. At the head is Awonawilona, the supreme, the 
giver and symbol of life, and life itself, of whose appearance 
there is no conception, of whom no image is made and naught 
is known save that he be the creator, who pervades all space. 
Beneath him, but of him and in him, is the Sun Father, giver of 
warmth and life; and his sister, the Moon Mother, bestower of 
the seasons and of death. She symbolizes the span of life as she 
ever waxes and wanes. Awonawilona draws from her pallid 
face the mystic veil, showing birth, infancy, youth and matur- 
ity, and then as slowly draws it back again that man may 
remember how, at last, when his strength is gone, he shall come 
again to the infancy of age, and sleep at length for a little while 
ere he journey to the Dance House of the Gods. Next come the 
Morning and Evening Stars, Orion, the Greater and Lesser Bear, 

[106] 



the Galaxy and Pleiades, and after them the virgin Mother Earth 
and her children, who are givers of themselves to man, the Corn 
Father, the Salt Woman, the Red and White Shell Maids, the 
Turquois Man, the Plumed Serpent, and the Great, Grim Gods 
of War. Then there are the Zoic Gods, who remove witchcraft, 
ill fortune and disease, the foremost of whom are the Bear, the 
Antelope, the Badger, the Eagle, the Coyote and the Cougar. 
The culture of each of these is in the care of its namesake clan, 
and one or more rooms in every community house is set aside as 
a chapel. The walls are decorated with paintings of the god, 
prayer plumes are placed on the altar hourly, and every day the 
sacred bowls of water and corn are refilled lest the god be made 
mad from lack of nourishment. 

But the most important of all the gods are the Uwannami 
or ancestral gods, whose company at death each Zuni joins, for 
they are the makers and the givers of the rain, which they dip 
from the six great waters of the world and carry in jugs to the 
upper firmament. The clouds that sail across the sky are the 
masks which protect them from the eyes of men, and through 
these masks they pour the rain that the heart of the earth may 
be good and grow green and the minds of men may think only 
thoughts that are good. The clouds are formed by the breath 
of the gods, and the winds are the breath of the Uwannami, who 
breathe not from the mouth, but from the heart. Lightning 
flashes are messages to and from the rulers of the North, the 
South, the East, and the West, and when it thunders the Zuni 
say the Uwannami are playing a game with stones. All these 
phenomena are of prime interest to the Zuni people, for their 
land is arid and the crops would die should the favor of the 
Ancestral Ones be withheld. So, almost every act of their exist- 
ence is a propitiation to these gods. When they raise their eyes 
to the heavens they murmur a prayer, when a cloud appears in 
the west they toss toward it a handful of sacred meal, when 
the first rain comes in the summertime they dance a dance of 
thanksgiving in the Uwannami's honor, and even decorate their 
vases with emblems of lightning and clouds and rain. 

One need not be an ethnologist to see at a glance that the 
Zunis are alien to the Acomans. They are tall, lithe, and remark- 

[107] 




ZUNI MASKS 



ably graceful, with fine ascetic features and velvety, dark bronze 
skins. Their cheekbones are high and often prominent, their 
eyes are brilliant, but narrow, and are hid under heavy brows. 
Their chins are pointed, their lips are thin, their muscles wiry. 
Only upon occasion do they smile, and walk as if poised for instant 
flight, wearing the vestments of their faith upon their counte- 
nance. They are a race of solemn religionaries, who see divinity 
everywhere and are constantly propitiating some passing, invis- 




A ZUNI DAXCE 



ible god. If you watch a group conversing in a plaza, you will 
presently notice one take from the pouch always hanging at 
his side a tiny bit of eagle down, which he allows to be wafted 
from him by the wind. Another will select a strand of cornsilk 
from the many he has tangled in a husk, and leaning out over a 
terrace, give it into the keeping of the air. So, too, when a man 
has lighted a cigarette, he will puff to the north, south, east and 
west before he begins to smoke it, and a woman upon entering 
a doorway sprinkles a pinch of meal upon the sill. Each act is 



[109] 



done with circumspection, according to custom and the ritual. 
They are mystics, philosophers, dreamers, fatalists, if you will, 
but if the last, most cheerful fatalists. They play games, they 
tell legends, they dance — indeed, they are always dancing. 
Almost every day sees a dance begun or ended, or the prepara- 
tion for it set on foot. The village is thronged from morning 
to night with gaily dressed performers wearing fanciful head 
ornaments and masks, and one constantly meets the priests in 




AN( KSTHAI, (iOIlS AWAITING THE APPROACH OF THE DANCERS 

their ceremonial attire on their way to attend services in the 
kivas or sacred rooms. In the evening, too, there is always some 
apartment which is musical with deep, full-throated song. But 
all these pastimes are religious ones, worship to Zuni's many 
saints, and must not be indulged in wantonly. So that there is 
always a hush in the village, the quiet of a church, and one feels 
like walking softly on one's toes. 

The garb of the people, while rich and glowing, is of more 
somber hues than the garb of the Acomans. The men wear 
darker trousers, have no patterns on their shirts, and their 



[110] 




ZUNI WATEll CARRIER 



[111] 



blankets are almost invariably black. Often the only touches 
of color in their costumes are the turquois of their necklaces and 
the crimson banda in their hair. The women still keep to their 
tribal dress — two black native blankets with narrow red or 
indigo borders, sewn together up the sides with a gap left open 
upon one, through which is thrust the right arm. Over this, 
upon festive occasions, they hang a white blanket deeply edged 
with scarlet or embroidered around the bottom in blue and green. 
They use no shawls upon their heads, but do their hair like the 




TYPRAL ziNi noi SI-: 



Acomans, and case their feet in the same deerskin leggings, which 
are held in place at the knee by a red woolen garter, woven at 
their husband's loom. 

The men do all the weaving; but this art no longer flour- 
ishes among them, except for ceremonial purposes and the blank- 
ets of their women's dress. They make much pottery, but it is 
inferior to that of the Acoman, and has no ready sale. Their 
principal industry is the drilling of turquois beads and the mould- 
ing of silver ornaments. They possess a turquois mine, which 
has been famous for several centuries, and the material for their 



[112] 




[113] 



ZINI WATER CARRIER 



beads is procured from this, but their silver mine is the Ameri- 
can pocketbook. Yet money does not come easy to the Zuni. 
The plain is dry and arid, so the yield of the fields is always inse- 
cure, and the ranches of Mexicans and Americans hedge them 
so closely round that they have no little trouble in finding suf- 
ficient pasturage for their herds. But the Zunis are thrifty and 
have managed to get along, some of them even acquiring fair- 
sized fortunes in horses and turquois and sheep. 




TYPICAL ZUNI YARD 



As one wanders aimlessly through Zuni, its difference from 
Acoma is brought most nearly home. At Acoma there were 
many greetings ; the townsfolk hastened to meet you at the trail, 
they discommoded themselves for your entertainment, they asked 
you at once to their houses and made you feel at home. But 
here, in Zuni, you are unaccosted and walk the streets alone. 
The women brush by you without a glance; the men, when they 
see you coming, will disperse; the bead maker at work by his 
open door will eye you askance for a moment and then turn his 

[114] 



back full upon you and commence his drilling again; the chil- 
dren dangle their feet from the terraces, watching you covertly, 
and will not be lured down the ladders with sticks of peppermint ; 
the burros in the alleys wag their ears at you with studied inso- 
lence and take pains to block your path; even the dogs, nonde- 
script curs that they are, refuse to bark. Should you enter a 
house — and you are never asked — you are shown no courtesy. 




ZlXl GIltLS — THE WATER CAlUilERS 



The inmates will display their stock of pottery and sometimes 
allow you to pat the baby's head, but they will offer you no seat, 
and should you stay above a dozen minutes the family will one 
by one depart, leaving the wife to keep an eye on you. They are 
not rude, but you can not mistake their greeting for a welcome, 
and you instinctively feel they will be relieved when you depart. 
If, ere you leave, you show an interest in the inner chamber and 
attempt to pry within, you will be given clearly to understand 
that you are not wanted there, because some service is in prog- 



[115] 



ress. Everywhere you meet with this secrecy. It hems you 
round like an imaginary line, circumscribing your actions and 
hindering your feet. 

You have a compensation, however, in looking at the town. 
Its appearance is very charming, very picturesque. Wherever 
one looks there is something new, something surprisingly strange 
to catch and hold the eye. The very inhibition put upon you adds 
zest to your visual inquiries. The crooked lanes, opening sud- 
denly into plazas and closing beyond into shadowy arcades where 

the children hide, the 
terraces rising about 
you in confusion till, 
to see the topmost you 
must crane your neck, 
the wood and corn- 
shocks piled upon 
them, their many 
chimney pots, the al- 
tars hidden in cran- 
nies of the walls, the 
old, deserted church 
in its shaded square, 
Towa Yal-lanne in 
the distance, the river 
flowing by, the pretty 
gardens on the bank, 
and the blue sky over 
all, compose a picture not easily forgot. The townsfolk, too, are 
in constant motion. Even the eagles, held captive for their 
down, strut in their wicker cages from daylight until dark. Men 
and women come and go upon mysterious errands, children romp 
in the streets, sheep bleat noisily in the corrals, burros enter the 
town and depart laden with the produce of the fields. Here is a 
grandmother baking some bread, there is a girl making pottery; 
this is a house of a silversmith, in that kiva the priests are at 
prayer, in the next plaza some dancers are dancing, in the room 
behind you a man is weaving a sash; and suddenly you catch 
your breath, for a dog has run up the ladder at your feet. You 




ENTKIilNG THIi ANTKI.l )l'i: KIVA 



[116] 



saw him, he is there beside you, yet the friend that is with you is 
doubtful until, lo and behold, in a moment scit-scat he goes scamp- 
ering down. 

But Zuni is most beautiful in the hazy twilight hour when 
the sun has gone to his couch of dreams and the silver sickle of 
the moon is pendent from the evening star. Then Awonawilona 
spreads a spirit through the sky of delicate lavenders, yellows 
and greens, and the breathing of the Uwannami comes in soft 
zephyrs from the South. Then the pinnacle on Towa Yal-lanne 
flares like a lighted torch and the mystical prairie draws across 
its face the shimmering nun's veiling of the dew. The houses 
of Zuni change into mother of pearl and rise like an aspiration 
by the river, the smoke of their evening fires spreading like 
incense through the still, gray air. And as the first stars appear 
on the forehead of the Mother Night, a silence falls like a pause 
in music upon the people, young and old. They come forth from 
their shrines and their kivas and, climbing on the house tops and 
joining their hands together for a moment, turn reverently and 
meekly toward the West. Then you know it is time you were 
leaving, for you are a pagan here, and Zuni — the whole of Zuni 
is in prayer. 




[117] 




zrNi 
CHAPTER VII. 



AMONG THE NOMAD NAVAJO, THE 
SHEPHERDS OF THE HILLS 

5Jj||UNI, the terraced city, is itself upon a terrace 
SCfll of the land, the lower step of a long plateau 
which runs in ridges toward the North and 
ends, at last, in a nest of hills where dwells 
the Navajo. This region is one vast meadow 
of chaparral and sage, sprinkled with yellow 
daisies and pink or purple flox, but, saving 
the piiion wind-breaks on the crests of its 
swelling knolls, it owns no shade, nor can it boast of a single, wel- 
come habitation, so that the traveler riding it soon wearies of 
its waste and longs for a glimpse of the forest that marks the 
Reservation boundary. 




[118] 



This reservation, set aside for the use of the Navajo, is an 
area, containing twenty thousand of square miles, in Northeast 
Arizona and Northwest New Mexico — a jjrincely freehold, yet 
one whose compass is scarcely equal to their need. For this 
domain is mostly a desert of sagebrush, rock and sand, in which 
the herbage is very sparse and oases few and far between, so 
that were it not for the mountain ranges which, traversing it 
from north to south, divide the sterile tract in twain, their flocks 
would fare but poorly in its immensity. These ranges are, how- 
ever, luxuriantly green and fruitful, even in their names, of 
which they have a number — Chuiska, Carizo, Tunicha, Lukai- 
Chuki; but unless you be a member of the Government Survey 
you will probably never ascertain where one of these begins or 
ends, for to the unenlightened eye they form a continuous, affili- 
ated chain from their commencement, at Black Creek Caiion, 
until they join the Rockies an hundred miles beyond. 

In appearance these hills of the Navajo are not high, but this 
is the fault of circumstance and not of measurement, for since 
the plain from which they rise has to its credit seven thousand 
feet, a peak whose summit tallies ten is robbed thereby of the 
grandeur due to such an elevation. Their origin, however, was 
in that troublous time when the land was ravished by the flames, 
and so they are a splendid maze of modulated ridges, of sudden 
bluffs and of verdant meadows, rimmed round by lofty walls of 
rock, that are magnificent alike in coloring and contour. Chim- 
neys of pumice stone stud their crests, gray bands of lava string 
their slopes together, and often their twisted sandstone crags are 
either rent into forelands of deep, impressive caiions or tilted 
into hogbacks so that they stand on end revealing the brilliant 
hues of many strata while, here and there, an entire bank has 
slipped from sight beneath the plain, leaving behind an unclimb- 
able cliff fluted with columns and festooned like the gardens of 
Babylon. Indeed, among them everywhere are the scars of their 
upheaval, and yet these splintered hills are never jagged, for their 
blemishes of birth are altered to an ornament by a forest of 
yellow pine which drapes them in a mantle of everlasting green, 
subduing every battlement, transforming every ridge and blend- 

[119] 



ing all promontories until each is indistinct and the ranges flow 
like an ocean at the turning of the tide in long, uninterrupted 
undulations. 

This verdant woodland is an hallowed place, a realm where 
day-dreams are the current coin, and by the owner, heart's desire. 
The trees — primeval giants, each an emblem of its kind, with 
stalwart trunks enveloped in bark of mottled gray and many- 
fingered branches with a tendency to droop, weighted with slen- 
der needles and militant with cones — stand well apart, as if 
they knew the worth of solitude and, crooning an eternal, cares- 
sing lullaby, weave changeful arabesques of green upon the curtain 
of the sky, which glints among their foliage at the end of every 
vista. They crowd together up a slope, the sheet of rock on 
which they stand showing through like a dull mosaic, open out 
on the crest into stately parks, drop for an instant into a quiet 
dell where they shade the placid waters of a lake, then hurry on 
past crag and cafion to roll down the steeps of an upland valley, 
where the buff^alo grass grows tall and green and humming birds 
are at play among the flowers. 

As one rides this forest there is constant change ; no single 
place, no vista is quite the same. The trees weave in and out of 
one another like shuttles on a loom, crooning an eternal lullaby 
that soothes but never causes drowsiness. 

If it be winter then the soft, white snow has laid its gentle 
hand upon these hills, washing from off them the stains of the 
sun. It hangs in such heavy garlands on these trees that they 
seem the nesting places of doves; it swathes the underbrush in 
robes that never have a fold, and, drifting into the caiions, fills 
them on occasion to the brim. The footprints of many tiny feet 
checker its fields with delicate patternings, but leave them as clean 
as the clouds from whence they fell. Indeed, so spotless is the 
coverlet which spreads unbroken over hill and dale, that it spar- 
kles like disintegrated stars, and in the hush it levies from the 
land one can hear the slow-throbbing pulse of the world. But 
it is in the spring and the summer that one loves these hills the 
most. Then they exhale a beauty more beautiful than song; 
then the air which floods them glows like a spider's web spun 
from threads of gold, and has an essence whose quality no one 

[120] 



may understand until he has breathed it deep into his being and 
let it filter through his soul. The forest is so open that the sun- 
light fills its reaches to the full, leaving only a ring of opalescent 
shadow beneath the tall, majestic trees. The coppices of oaks 
are flush with tender leaves and budding acorns, the shrubbery 
of weeping cedars, currants and mountain mahoganies are blue 
and purple with berries or heavy with pink or yellow blooms. 
The ground is pied with countless little flowers — Mariposa 
lilies, larkspur, daisies, yucca, lupin and flox — and the trees on 
which the green cones hang in clusters are noisy with the carol- 
ing of mocking birds, finches, linnets, thrushes and jays, whose 
lilts are measured by the chatter of squirrels. The forest also 
harbors bigger game. Silver-tipped and cinnamon bears have 
dens in the rocky ledges, wild fowl breed on its little lakes, 
foxes and coyotes hunt through its tangled thickets, deer and 
antelope graze in its open parks, and cougars and wild-cats hide 
themselves in the branches of its pines. 

To the east and west these broad-topped mountains break 
into caiions, which were the hall-mark of wind and rain, and 
these in turn dissolve into beautiful vales. Upon one side of 
these the stalwart trees come down in a rolling tidal wave of 
green and walk for a space along the edge in scattered piiion 
groves, and upon the other stand sea-carved battlements of pink 
which ward away the desert sands. 

Of old the Navajos kept to the hills, but now they are scat- 
tered far and wide, through the vales, through the deserts, even 
beyond the bounds of their reservation. They are a nomad 
tribe of some twelve thousand souls, a nation whose house is the 
open air. For long before and after the dreaded white man 
came, indeed till a generation ago, they were a race of savage 
warriors, a company of nimble-footed brigands who, living 
securely in their hills, swept under cover of the night through 
the hamlets and ranches which dotted the open plain. Many a 
fire in many a harvest field has lighted up the scene of their 
maraudings, the smoldering ruins of many a pueblo has borne 
a witness to their deviltry. They took and gave no quarter on 
their forays nor left an article behind, but razed the houses, 
killed and scalped the men, bound the women over to be slaves, 

[121] 



and captured live stock by the multitude. In the end these raids 
have proven their salvation for, slowly as the young men learned 
the prestige which lay in a herd of horses, the wealth in a band 
of sheep, they tended their stolen flocks with greater care, and 
finally abandoned the warpath of their sires to wander their 
verdant upland valleys in quest of pasturage. So they who were 
once a terror in the land are today become shepherds and farming- 
folk like the people their fathers slew, and now only in their 
sacred legends which have come down from an immemorial past 
does one hear among them the whisperings of war. 

In these, however, there is little else, for their gods and 
goddesses, of which there is seemingly no end, have each of them 
won to a divinity through acts of consummate cunning or the 
strength of a strong right arm. Their religion is an inchoate 
mixture of supernatural beings, some of them good and some of 
them evil, but all of whom are ever to be feared. Amid this 
company no one is supreme. Each has his special rights and 
attributes, each has his own abiding place, each has particular 
duties to perform. Beyond these limits their powers are circum- 
scribed, and their acts depend upon the assistance of their fellows. 
None of that spirituality which we find among the pueblo deities 
clothes or enhances them. Indeed, they are scarcely more than 
immortal men and women, as their name of "Them who never 
die" implies, and one seeks in vain to find among them all a single 
tender, endearing quality. They think nothing of cheating or 
harming one another, and should a Navajo desire their support 
he must pay them well for what succor he receives, and should 
he unintentionally transgress the least important of their many 
laws they visit him with heavy punishment. 

Collectively, these gods are called Digini Dine, but may be 
subdivided into three classes: the Yebitsai, or grandfathers of 
the giants who existed at the beginning, the divinities whom the 
Yebitsai created for various purposes, in which are included 
the bearers of the Sun and the Moon, the White Shell Woman, 
Estsannatlehi, the woman who changes; First Man, First 
Woman, and the two gods of war ; and the tsindis or evil spirits, 
who work harm. Besides these there are a legion of lesser sprites 
who dwell in the water, the rocks and the trees; and the animal 

[122] 



gods, or prototypes in the form of men of the most important 
existing birds and beasts, of whom Coyote is the chief. 

Unlike the deities themselves, the legends which tell of their 
births and deeds abound in poetic fire and beautiful imagery. 
There must be at least ten thousand of these entrancing fairy 
tales, each one of which has a dozen variants. In them we are 
told how at the Beginning, the Ant, the Beetle, and Locust People 
dwelt in the First World; how for sin they were forced to climb 
through the sky to a second world above, and thence for the same 
cause to a third and fourth; how here the Yebitsai created the 
First Man and the First Woman from ears of corn, how the 
descendants of these sinned, and the waters rose and compelled 
them to cliinb again through a slender reed to a fifth world, which 
is ours ; how here they placed the mountains and made the sun and 
moon and stars, how they bore giants who grew and killed them off 
until finally only four of them remained; how then the Yebitsai 
made two magical women who bore two sons, the gods of war, by 
whom the giants and monsters were destroyed, and how at last 
the human race came to be, and the present clans of the Navajo 
— or Dine, as they call themselves — arose and prospered in the 
land. Between these major episodes are placed a host of minor 
incidents — telling, to mention only a few, of the coyote's mischief - 
makings, for which he is continually being killed and chopped into 
pieces only to come alive again more mischievous than ever; of 
the woman who changed herself into a bear and her short career 
of crime, of the gambler Nohoilpi and how he lost his fortune and 
was shot like an arrow into the air ; of the witch who changed her- 
self into a comely maiden and enticed men to her house on the 
top of a rock, where she promptly devoured them; of beavers 
who skinned themselves, and of little birds who rolled enormous 
stones and played at pulling out their eyes — all of which 
serve to explain the raison d'etre of existing things. Indeed the 
Navajos account for each fact, no matter how minute. They 
know why the turkey's tail has a bar of white, how the horned 
toad got his prickles, why the pinon trees bear nuts, why they are 
nomads and not pueblo Indians, and why they bury their dead in 
the rocks instead of the ground. From the time the wind blows 
the breath into their mouths, until it draws it forth again, forever, 

[123] 



they do nothing but what has its precedent in the legends. So, 
to thoroughly understand their life and customs, we ought to 
learn the legends all by heart; but we have not the leisure for 
such acquaintance here. The most we can do is to trace the 
origin of some of their most peculiar usages as the mention of 
each is made, and leave the remainder with the medicine men. 

The memory of these singers, or Hatali, as they are called, 
transcends the marvelous. Not only do they preserve unchanged 
this mass of oral tradition from age to age — a feat no body of 
white men could accomplish — but they must also keep at their 
finger tips the liturgy of the rites which they perform, including 
the many long, exhaustive prayers, some of which take three hours 
to repeat. Should one in the conduct of a ceremony derange an 
act of service or misplace so much as a single word in the legends, 
prayers or hymns, the whole must be rebegun or else it becomes 
a tsindi, an evil thing. Naturally, then, the medicine man's 
profession requires years and years of arduous training, and 
only the brainiest in the tribe can ever become a member of the 
same, and only a few of those who get thus far can hope to rise 
to eminence therein. It follows, of course, that these Hatali 
compose the Navajo aristocracy. Yet, unlike most nomad peo- 
ples, the Navajos have no chief, for they argue that since among 
their gods no one god is supreme, hence here on earth there must 
be democracy. So the influence an individual exerts depends on 
his personality. If he is a good orator and can swing a gather- 
ing to his way of thinking, if he is learned in the tribal customs 
and traditions, or if he be wealthy in horses and sheep, he may 
win to a certain degree of authority, but this authority never 
extends beyond the locality in which he lives, and should he 
journey far from home he is likely to find himself unappreciated. 

As a class, however, the medicine men wield a power which 
is all but absolute, for they are the physicians of the tribe, and 
among primitive peoples who know nothing of hygiene or physi- 
ology, the art of healing is thought miraculous. Among the 
Navajos this belief is carried to extremes. They possess knowl- 
edge of several drugs and medicinal herbs, it is true, but even 
these to be efficacious must be administered by a priest, for efficacy 
comes directly from the gods. Hence all their rites are thera- 

[124] 




MEDH INE MAN 



[125] 



peutical. Their religion may be called an unenlightened Chris- 
tian Science, whose creed is that "the goblins will catch you if 
you don't watch out." It is thought that the tsindis send 
disease, and even the gods themselves are not averse to torturing 
a man if he has been lax in paying his respects. So, whenever 
a man has a toothache, or has seen an evil spirit, say an owl, or 
has an untoward accident happen him, he calls an Hatali to 
conduct a Sing and exorcise the devils from his jjerson. 

Every mental and physical ill has its special rite, so that there 
are an excessive number of these Sings. Some of them are unim- 
portant affairs, lasting only for an hour or two and consisting 
mainly of a long prayer and a dose of magical medicine. Others 
are for more urgent cases and are more ceremonious. These 
may stretch over nine days or nights, although most of them con- 
tinue but for five, and are much more formal and interesting. 
Among them may be mentioned the Coyote Sing, the Feather 
Sing, the Ant Sing, the Dragon Fly Sing, and the Spider Cere- 
mony. They are very quaint, very picturesque, and abound in 
poetic symbolism. But they can not compare with the three great- 
est Sings of all, which are more often spoken of as chants — the 
Yebitsai, Wind and Mountain Chants — all of which continue 
through nine consecutive days and nights. These are held only 
in the winter months, between the first frost in the fall and the 
first thunder in the spring. They are not employed to remove 
a specific disease, but are what one might call annual house- 
cleanings of the soul, and are meant as preventatives rather than 
cures for evil. In them the gods themselves appear in person to 
the patient and administer to him the sacred remedies. This 
seeming miracle is performed by a most amusing method. Some 
of the patient's neighbors, or members of his family perhaps, strip 
and paint their bodies with a fluid colored by charcoal or pulver- 
ized rock, tie a fandangle kilt about their loins and slip a befeath- 
ered buckskin mask completely over their heads. In this guise, 
which thoroughly hides their identity, they come at the proper 
moment before the patient and shout in his ear or pound him on 
the back as the observance they are acting may demand. It is 
thought, for the time being, these men are in reality the gods, and 
therefore while they wear the masks, they speak only in signs or 

[126] 



a series of hallooing calls. In order that the proper religious 
feeling may be retained by the patient for his temporarily sancti- 
fied relations, he is not allowed to see them dress, and only dis- 
covers who the gods have been after the ceremony. Besides these 
dramatic impersonations, the chants are filled with many beau- 
tiful acts of service. 




CEREMONIAL MASKS 



Kethawns — the Navajo Prayer Plumes — are made and 
planted, the patient is dressed in robes of spruce boughs or his 
naked body is painted with various symbols, the singer sings 
songs to the shaking of rattles or the beating of drums, and on 
the last night a public dance is always held, to witness which 
crowds gather from far and near. 

The medicine lodges in which these chants are held resemble 
the ordinary hogan or house in everything but size, being twice as 
large, and since no ceremony can ever be held in them again they 



[127] 



are indeed often used as dwellings afterwards. Though they are 
simiDle, it is no easy matter to construct them, and the process 
requires several days. They are built entirely of green, barked 
pine logs, propped in a circle against three carefully interlocked 
poles from which two other poles extend to the pronged tops of 
the door jambs. At the door is hung a blanket, a hole is left open 
at the apex of the cone for the escape of smoke, and the space 
between the door and this chimney is roofed across with boughs. 




A NAVAJO HOGAN 



To keep the wind and rain from driving through the cracks, the 
logs are covered with strips of bark, over which in turn is thrown 
a layer of pine needles and dirt. This leaves a circular interior 
whose walls slope like a tent's, whose floor is the ground, and 
which has no ceiling but the sky. The arrangements are as 
simple as the dwelling. A fire, which is never extinguished, burns 
in the center directly beneath the hole, bundles of sheep pelts and 
blankets are rolled against the walls by day and spread into beds 
at night, the American pots and pans and water buckets are 
stacked on one side of the door, and besides these, possibly in an 



[128] 



empty packing case, are stored the supply of groceries — coffee, 
flour, canned goods, pinon nuts and corn. 

The Navajos have besides this type of dwelling several others, 
but their difference lies more in the manner of construction than 
the shape. There is the circular hogan where the logs are laid 
horizontally and curve symmetrically to the central aperture; 
the summer shelter or wick-y-up built of greenwood boughs, the 
stone hut, and the usual frontier cabin. But, no matter of what 




A xaVajo simmer hogan 



variety they are, all have two things in common — the hole in 
the roof and the doorway facing directly on the east. 

The reasons for this are found in the following legend: 
In the days when the giants had killed and eaten all but four 
of the mythical people who came from the underworlds, these 
sought refuge at White Standing Rock, near which they found 
the tiny turquois image of a woman. A few days after their 
arrival there they heard in the distance a Yebitsai calling: 



[129] 



"Wu-whu-whu-whu, Wu-whu-whu-whu," and knew that he was 
coming to see them. After a time he appeared before them and 
told them to go when twelve nights had passed to the top of a 
sacred mountain near by, bringing thither the little turquois 
image. When he had gone they pondered deeply and asked them- 
selves many questions, wondering for what purpose Hastseyalti, 
for such was his name, had summoned them all to the mountain. 

On the appointed day they ascended by an holy trail to a level 
spot near the summit, where they met a party awaiting them, 
Beside Hastseyalti, there was Hastsehogan, White Body, who 
had come up with them from the underworld, the Mirage Stone 
People and the eleven brothers of the maid who became a bear. 
These stood in a circle around a sacred buckskin which was 
stretched upon the ground. To the east of this stood the White 
Dawn People, to the south were the Blue Sky People of the Day, 
to the west the Yellow Sunset Folk, and on the north the black- 
robed Children of the Dark. Hastseyalti laid the turquois image 
and a similar image fashioned of white shell upon the buckskin, 
placing beside them a white and a yellow ear of corn, the Pollen 
Boy and the Grasshopper Girl. These he covered with another 
sacred buckskin, under which he placed Niltsi, the wind. Now 
the assembled company sang a song. Four times they sang it, 
softly, crooningly, and at each repetition Hastseyalti entered the 
ring and raised the buckskin. The fourth time he did so the 
images and the ears of corn were found to be changed into living 
beings of human form. The turquois had become Estsannatlehi, 
the woman who, when she grows old, becomes young again ; the 
white shell was her sister, Yolkai Estsan ; the white ear of corn 
was the White Corn Boy, and the yellow ear the Girl of the Yellow 
Corn. So soon as they had risen from the buckskin, White Body 
took with him deep into the mountain the Pollen Boy and the Grass- 
hopper Girl and the White Corn Boy and the Yellow Corn Girl, 
and the rest of the holy ones departed, leaving the two sisters on 
the mountain alone. 

Four nights the women stayed here on the side of the moun- 
tain, each with the other for company. On the morning of 
the fourth day Estsannatlehi said: "Why should we stay here, 
younger sister? Tell me why. Let us go to the high peak 

[130] 



yonder and look around us." So they journeyed to the summit 
of the mountain. When they had been there several days, Estsan- 
natlehi said again : "Younger sister, it is lonely here. We have 
no one to speak with but ourselves, and we see nothing all day 
long but the sun which rolls above our heads and the water which 
trickles from yonder waterfall." "That is true, my elder sister," 
said Yolkai Estsan, and then she added, after a little while, "Do 
you think the sun and the water can be people?" "Let us see if 
it be so," Estsannatlehi answered her. "I shall stay here and 
await for the one in the morning, and do you go down among the 
rocks and seek the other there." 

At dawn of the succeeding day Estsannatlehi found for her- 
self a bare flat rock, where she lay down with her feet toward the 
east that the rising sun might shed his light upon her, and Yolkai 
Estsan went down to the waterfall and, lying upon the rocks 
beneath, allowed it to drip upon her. At noon the women met 
on the mountain top and they were sorrowful, for they thought 
no people had come to them. And Estsannatlehi said : "My little 
sister, it is very, very sad to be so lonesome. Tell me how we may 
make people so that we may have others to talk with besides our- 
selves." "I do not know," replied Yolkai Estsan, "but do you 
think well of it, sister, and plan how it is to be done." 

For four days and nights the women pondered deeply, schem- 
ing to make people like themselves. Then Yolkai Estsan said: 
"Elder sister, I feel something strange move within me. I wonder 
what it can be!" And Estsannatlehi answered: "It is a child. 
It was for this that you lay beneath the waterfall, sister mine. 
I know it now, for I also feel within me the motions of a child, and 
it was for this that I lay on a rock in the sun." And so it was, 
indeed. After a little while the boys were born, and grew to be 
the Navajo Gods of War, who destroyed the giants from off the 
land. And because the father of one was the water and the father 
of the other the sun, therefore do the Navajos today build their 
hogans so that the Sun God may enter them in the morning and 
the Rain God fall within when it rains. 

The social structure of the Navajos is as simple, if not 
simpler, than their dwellings. The people are divided into clans, 
each one of which has an origin legend from which, as in the 

[131] 



Goat Clan, it usually takes its name. However, the members 
of these clans are scattered far and wide, so that the actual basis 
of society is the individual family and not the gens. Even the 
bonds of this family are lax. Polygamy is practiced, and both 
men and women, until they pass the bounds of middle age, are 
great philanderers. Indeed, a marriage as a white man knows 
it, can scarcely be said to exist at all. The number of wives a 
man may have depends on the size of his pocketbook, and since 
in each instance his only expense is the initial one "procural," he 
usually has several. The manner in which an enamoured swain 
woos and wins his dulcinea is very humorous. He seldom speaks 
to the girl herself, but sends a friend to her papa to inquire of 
him the very lowest price at which he may become his son-in-law. 
This urgent matter settled — and the value of the woman declines 
as her marital experiences grow — the young man comes in person 
to her hogan. The outcome of this social call determines his 
future status in the family. He enters silently, lights a cigarette, 
smokes part of it and then, flicking the ashes carefully from the 
end, offers it to his prospective mother-in-law. If she accepts it, 
puffs at it for a while and then, with the same courtesy, hands it 
back, he is thenceforth persona grata with her. But if not, she 
becomes a nushjai or an owl, and he and she must never meet lest 
she bewitch him with her evil eye. The women smoke as freely 
as the men, but on this occasion they usually think the practice 
quite unsuited to their sex, and so the young man goes away pre- 
pared to dodge her presence. This superstition entails on both 
a heavy penalty, and it is not an infrequent sight to see the one 
making long detours or waiting for hours, outside a trading store 
because the other is purchasing within. This conference, import- 
ant as it is, does not, however, make smooth the way of love. The 
final consent to marriage lies with the girl, and since her marriage 
portion goes to her maternal uncles and not to herself, she need 
consider nothing but her affection. 

The ceremony itself is a minor incident. No flowers are 
sent, no presents are given. The singer says a prayer which the 
bride and groom repeat, asking for the couple's good health, many 
children, and happiness, and after they have each eaten a bit of 
meal out of the same basket, pronounces them man and wife. The 

[132] 



life of neither is changed by the marriage. They continue to live 
in their respective homes, the husband merely visiting his wife. 
Unless he is reconciled with his mother-in-law, he never enters 
her hogan during these calls, but sojourns in a wick-y-up close by, 
whither his wife comes out to him. Divorce by both parties is 
easy to obtain. Should the man have reason to suspect her fidelity 
he ceases his occasional calls and may, after a decent interval of 




A NA\ A,lo I' \M II A 



mourning, marry again. Should the woman tire of his atten- 
tions, all she need do is to remain in her mother's hogan when he 
comes, and he takes the gentle hint without query. It is all very 
practical, very matter-of-fact. If they find, however, as the years 
progress, that their love is no ephemereal affection, but a passion 
destined to endure, the man divides his share of horses and sheep 
from his parents' flocks and builds him an hogan of his own, 
whither, when all is ready, comes his wife, bringing her numerous 
pots and pans, and together they set up the heavy blanket loom. 



[133] 



This loom is the epitome of their labor, the consummate diary 
of their lives. Upon it they write their joys and sorrows, from 
off of it they gain their bread, to it they devote the major portion 
of the day. It is an unique contrivance, very simple, but very 
cumbersome. A heavy log, about six feet long, is suspended be- 
tween two posts about five feet high. To this log is lashed a 
lighter pole, so that it may be readily raised or lowered at need, 
between which and a third pole on the ground, the warp is 
stretched taut and even. The weaver sits on the ground before 
the loom, changing the set after each strand of wool is run, 
which by an ingenious method of catch strings she pulls towards 
her, thereby bringing the rear warp to the fore. To hold it in 
place until the new strand is run, she inserts a beating stick to 
pry the two warps apart and tighten the strands already laid. 

The blanket industry is not new among the Navajos. They 
learned the art more than an hundred years ago from their neigh- 
bors, the pueblans, and mastered its intricacies so well they soon 
were selling their product to their teachers. Before the intro- 
duction of diamond dyes they distilled their colors from vari- 
ous vegetables — getting their blue from the indigo, their green 
from the sage, their yellow from the daisy, their black from the 
bark of the mountain rose, and their purple from a cactus. Red, 
a real red, they never had until they learned to unravel the bayetta 
flannel under-garments of the Mexicans. These old blankets were 
made for wear, and worn they were to tatters oftentimes, so that 
the few remaining in good condition are very rare and very 
valuable. Indeed, they are almost priceless, and did a Navajo 
have one of them today his fortune would be made, for there are 
not three hundred of them in all, and the majority of these, it 
is sad to say, are in the British National Museum. The old 
shades were more luminous and lasting than the new, and the 
yarn was much finer spun, so that in many ways these old blankets 
are more beautiful than those now made among them. Indeed, 
the present blanket, save when it is made of American German- 
town yarn, is really less blanket than rug, being thick and soft 
and having a lengthy nap. This change is due, no doubt, to the 
fact that they are no longer made for home consumption, but to 
sell to the traders who pay the weavers by the pound. The utili- 

[134] 



tarian spirit evidenced in this additional weight has not, however, 
been carried into the design, and in this direction the modern 
article, if anything, surpasses its predecessor. In spite of the 
thousands annually made and the fact that all of the patterns 
employed are geometrical, no two of the blankets are ever exactly 
the same, even when ordered so. Each one is an original crea- 
tion, the personal combination by the weaver of some or all of 
the many figures — diamonds, crosses, swastikas, zigzags, pyra- 
mids, Grecian borders, squares and bands, so that each is an 
individual work of art. This is not strange, as no drawing of 
the pattern is ever made. It grows to completion as the blanket 
grows, slowly and intermittently, from fancies in the weaver's 
brain. Yet all are finished, each one is complete, there is in non^ 
an incongruity. Made from the wool from off their flocks, carded 
and spun by hand in the hogan, and woven, except in the winter 
months, entirely out of doors, they possess moreover a quality finer 
than this unpremeditation of design. They seem to catch God's 
Country in their threads, the spirit of that sunshine, verdure 
and air which makes the land of the Navajo beautiful and holds 
the essence of its poetry and charm. 

What with the care of their flocks and fields, the weaving of 
blankets and their household duties, one would suppose the Nava- 
jos to have scant leisure for amusement, but they manage to 
wedge many pastimes with their work. Their games are, all of 
them, games of chance, but betting is never heavy, and an invet- 
erate gambler quickly loses caste. Some of these pertain to a 
sex, as the stick game of the women and the pole game of the men, 
but many others, like Mexican monte and koon-kan, a sort of 
piquet of their own invention, and the moccasin game which they 
play in their hogans in the winter evenings, are open to both. 
This last resembles most nearly that diversion of our childhood 
days commonly known as "who's got the button?" except that 
a pebble instead of a button is used, and this, instead of being held 
in the hand is buried in one of the four moccasins filled with dirt, 
its methods are much the same. It is, however, more formal, for 
it has a semi-religious origin. The legends assert that it first 
was played by the animal gods, and during its progress now, the 
participants sing a series of songs narrating the deeds and virtues 

[135] 



of these. The count is kept by yucca sticks, each side at the start 
having a hundred of these, which they pay to the other in numbers 
of from four to ten as a penalty for their having failed to eliminate 
in their guess all of the moccasins save the one in which the pebble 
lies, and the game is won by the side first having all of the counters 
of its opponent in possession. Once a game is begun it may not 
be discontinued, no matter how tedious it may become, until the 
dawn light gilds the sky. Then it must stop on the instant, for 
the sun god is presumed to like it not, but it may be continued 
the following evening. 




NAVAJO HORSE RACE 



But the two favorite sports of the Navajos are horse racing 
and chicken pulls. For these no time or season is out of tune. 
Winter and summer, day in, day out, they indulge in the 
former to their heart's content, running their wiry ponies against 
one another or matching a race with some bigger American horse. 
A chicken pull occurs less frequently, for since they themselves 
do not possess the necessary chicken, they must wait until a trader 
gives them one. This each of the traders are willing to do once 
a year, for among this people who have no newspapers, a nahohai, 
as a pull is called, is their easiest form of advertisement. It 
brings a crowd to the little store and gives the owner a chance 



[136] 



to display his wares to a larger clientele, so that even if he does 
not procure a return on the money expended for the chicken and 
other prizes then, he is certain to do so sooner or later, for those 
who attend will carry an excellent report of his articles to their 
stay-at-home neighbors. 

The actual chicken pull is of short duration, lasting an 
half an hour at the most, but the nahohai continues all the day. 
The crowds begin to gather early in the morning, some of the 
more exclusive families even arriving the night before. They 




CHICKEN PULL 



come on horseback, in wagons, on foot, and even on burros, all 
of them dressed in gala-day attire. The men wear their very 
newest corduroy trousers, their most brilliant V-necked, velvet 
shirts, their showiest bandas, their finest jewelry, and have their 
hair immaculately coiffured. It is drawn together at the nape 
of the neck, and after being tightly bound with a cord, is rolled in 
a fold as long as the hand and tied again at the middle, so that 
when finished it has the shape of a double fan. The women's 
dress is practically the same, except, of course, that they wear 
skirts instead of trousers. Even the cleverest modiste could 



[137] 



learn new tricks from the hang of these petticoats. No woman 
on earth, save a Navajo squaw, can take six yards of calico, gather 
them about the waist and have them take so many different angles ; 




A XA\ A-IO S(1lii;TV I.KAIIKI! 



nor can she, when this marvel is put on, mount a horse and sit 
straddle there without so much as showing her slender ankle. It 
requires an art which the civilized woman has either not mastered 
or has long ago lost. 

^ [138] 



When the trader finally makes his appearance about one or 
two o'clock, with the chicken dangling in his hands, there is a rush 
of horses, a hitching-up of teams, and the crowd moves leisurely 
toward the race course, ranging themselves on either side of the 
track. They make a pretty picture sitting there in a double line 
in their flashing costumes, with silver and wampum necklaces 
around their necks, turquois pendants in their ears, bracelets and 
rings on their arms and fingers, wide silver belts about their waists 




and silver bridles on their restive ponies. Silence reigns while 
the chicken is buried in a hole until only his head protrudes, the 
dirt being moistened and stamped with the foot to pack it hard, 
so that the trophy can not be easily extracted ; but so soon as the 
trader gives the signal that all is ready for the pull an obstreperous 
pandemonium breaks loose. Riders push and shove their mounts 
through the throng, whirling in circles to make a space, beating 
the rumps and noses of the horses nearest them, shouting, gesticu- 
lating, urging, until finally they work their way to the track and 



[139] 



congregate at the farther end. Here they form in line, precedence 
being decided by arrival, and at a shout from the trader, come 
charging down upon the chicken, who, lucky for him, has by this 
time yielded up his chicken-hearted ghost. As each one gallops 
by he stoops from the saddle and grabs for the neck. The first 
one misses ; the second barely touches it with his fingers ; the horse 
of the third contestant shies; the fourth one is more lucky, he 
catches hold for an instant, but is forced to let go to keep himself 
from falling. So on and on they come riding around to the start- 
ing place after every unsuccessful attempt. Occasionally some 
man loses his balance and falls, turning somersaults down the 
track; sometimes the sudden lurch throws the horse and he and 
his rider roll in the dust; sometimes a steed becomes wild with 
fright and charges indiscriminately into the throng. But nothing 
is allowed to interfere with the contest. If one contestant drops 
out, another moves up to his place. Gradually, as the chicken 
becomes loosened and its neck becomes longer and easier to hold, 
the excitement grows intense. The spectators keep their eyes 
fixed on the trophy, shouting and clapping their hands as now one 
rider and then another almost wrench it free, and finally when the 
lucky man pulls it out as he races by, the spurs are put to an hun- 
dred flanks, and the whole crowd canters after him en masse. 
Away he goes through the sagebrush, dodging behind trees, jump- 
ing ditches, swinging the chicken high above his head, and bringing 
it down on the heads of his pursuers who come too near. At last 
they surround him, hedge him in, and a dozen arms shoot out to 
grab the chicken, or pull him from the saddle in the attempt. He 
must stand the onslaught of the entire crowd. To keep the chicken 
is impossible, so zip! he flings it into the air. Another catches it 
as it falls, and the chase is on again. Around the store, up and 
down the track, through woods, across meadows, it waxes and 
wanes until finally the chicken is torn into bits, and the crowd no 
longer knows whom to pursue. 

Then laughing and shouting, all return to the track, for the 
pull is but the beginning of the fun. Numerous field sports fol- 
low. There are wrestling bouts, foot races by old men and young, 
squaw races, horse races, tugs of war, for all of which prizes are 
offered by the trader, and bets made and taken by the entire throng. 

[140] 



Usually those who live near by contest with those who have come 
from other sections, but never is there the echo of a fracas. Good 
humor reigns supreme; there is never a quarrel or angry word, 
never the hint of disappointment among the losers. They give 
and take hard knocks with a laugh and a jest ; nothing unsettles 
their humor or clouds their play. So long as the daylight lasts 
they romp and tousle, but when twilight comes and the shadows 
fade into the soft, gray canopy of night, they ride in clusters 
through trees, hieing to the neighboring hogans, for they have 
a childlike terror of the dark. 

To them it is peopled with evil things — bats, owls, tsindi 
and the ghosts of their dead. Of these last they are especially 
afraid, for death itself is an awful mystery. They have part way 
solved the riddle in their legends, but the knowledge, if such it may 
be called, has only added to their dread of it. So keen is the fear 
that even a hogan in which a human being dies is thenceforth 
haunted and accursed. A hole is straightway made in its western 
side, that the spirit of the departed may fly away, and then it is 
abandoned by all forever. Should a Navajo pass by it after the 
sun has set, he turns his face in the opposite direction and chants 
a litany to weave a spell about his person lest the ghost approach 
and touch him and he die. The song he sings is of the sun and 
moon and stars, for they were the cause of the first bereavement, 
and in their keeping still remain the threads of every life. 

The story of their creation is beautiful. 

When the people climbed up onto this world from below, they 
still had with them the three lights and the darkness — the white 
light of dawn, the blue light of day, the yellow light of sunset, and 
the blackness of night — but First Man and First Woman thought 
it would be well if they formed some other lights to make the new 
world brighter, and so, after much deliberation, they decided to 
create the sun and moon and stars. 

For the sun they fashioned a disc of mirage stone, which they 
set with turquois and edged with rays of red rain, lightning and 
snakes of many kinds. The moon they made from crystal, which 
they bordered with white shells, and put the spirit of waters upon 
its face. Then they considered what they should do with these 
things, and where they should make them rise. The wind of the 

[141] 



east begged so hard that they might be brought to his land, that 
at last they dragged them thither to the edge of the world where 
the east wind dwelt. There they gave the sun into the keeping 
of Tsinhanoai, the young man who had i^lanted the reed in the 
lower world, and bade him carry it. They bestowed the moon 
upon his companion, Klehanoai, and then returned to the Place of 
Emergence and set about making the stars. For these they 
gathered sparkling bits of mica, on each of which they put four 
points of crystal. When all of the stars had been made, First Man 
drew a plan of the heavens on the ground and proceeded to place 
them. In the north, where he wished to have one which should 
never move, he put the brightest of all and set about seven others. 
Next he placed one in the south, one in the east and one in the west, 
and then he placed various other constellations. But before he 
had finished. Coyote came along and growing impatient, exclaimed, 
"They will do as they are," and hastily gathered them in his hands. 
When he had collected all of the bits of mica, he tossed them 
upward, blowing a breath upon them as he did so. Instantly they 
stuck in the sky, those to which a place had been assigned adhering 
in their proper places, but the rest remaining wherever they hap- 
pened to light. 

On the fifth morning thereafter the sun climbed into the 
heavens as usual, but when he reached the zenith he stopped. The 
day grew very hot and all the people longed for night to come, but 
the sun moved not. Then the wise Coyote said, "Tsinhanoai stops 
because he has not been paid for his work. When you give him 
his due he will move again." Even as he spoke the wife of a great 
chief ceased to breathe, and Tsinhanoai moved on. The people 
wondered greatly what evil thing had come upon the woman, and 
they left her to lie alone through the night. When morning came 
again. Coyote proposed that they lay her among the rocks. This 
they did, but they wondered much as to whither her breath had 
gone. And they sought its trail in various directions, but found 
it not, anywhere. While they were hunting, two men searched 
near the hole through which they had emerged from the under- 
world, and it occurred to one of these to look down the hole. When 
he did so he saw far below him the maiden seated by the side of 
the river of the fourth world, singing and combing her hair. He 

[142] 



called to her, but she heard him not, but his companion came and 
looked down at her, too. Then they returned to the people and 
related what things they had seen. 

That evening the moon also stopped in the zenith, and while 
the people grew uneasy the two men who had seen the maiden 
ceased to breathe and grew cold, and Klehanoai was observed to 
move again. Then the people asked Coyote to explain these 
miracles and he said, "The heavens are wide and it is no easy 
task for Tsinhanoai and Klehanoai to bear across them the heavy 
shields you bade them carry. Therefore, does each require every 
day the breath of one among you to strengthen him on his journey." 
And so the people were given understanding of the matter. And 
thereafter until now and forever the sun takes toll of a human life 
for his daily fee ; but the moon procures his from among the alien 
races, who separated from the people in that long, long ago when 
the first one died. 




[143] 









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CHAPTER VIII. 



THE UNREMEMBERED PEOPLE 

HE Carrizo Mountains, on their western side, 
drop through a series of upland valleys, crags 
and small volcano cones, pell-mell into a 
canon called Canon de Chelley, which in turn 
is lost among the hummocks and dunes of the 
Chin Lee desert. This canon, or nest of 
canons, for there are several branches, each 
one of which has its own peculiar name, runs 
from the desert far up into the hills for a distance of seventy or 
eighty miles, but in its entirety would cover near a thousand. 
The two main forks are known respectively as Canon de Chelley 
and Caiion del Muerto, the last being christened by a massacre 
enacted perhaps a century ago high up on its walls, when a com- 




[144] 



pany of Mexican soldiers came upon a hidden band of renegade 
Navajos and killed them all without regard to sex or age. Then 
there is Bear Canon, Bat Cafion, Monument Canon, Chokecherry 
Canon, and half a dozen others, any one of which you would need a 
week to thoroughly explore. 

Canon de Chelley, though large and beautiful, can not com- 
pare in pure, perfect grandeur with the Grand Cafion of the 
Colorado River, but there is a note within it one misses in its 




t'ANON Di; I. IIEI.LKV 



larger sister, a charm and a delicacy which brings it nearer to 
the heart, if not so close to the spirit's aspirations. One loves it 
much more deeply, though not, perhaps, with half so fine a love, 
and one feels more at home among its cliffs because they are not 
too high for comprehension. Unlike the Grand Cafion, which 
was carved entirely by a river, the many-fingered ripples of a 
stream, there is no tracery of water in the making of Cafion de 
Chelley and its tributaries. Instead, it was rent apart by some 
convulsion in the earth at the time when the land first stretched 



[145] 



its baby fingers toward the sun. But wrinkles, they say, are only 
the shadows of smiles, so perhaps these canons are but the pencil- 
lings upon our granddam's face of the laughs she laughed and 
the songs she sang around the cradles of the stars. 

The walls of the canon are no more than four hundred yards 
apart, save where the influx of a branch widened them for a 
moment to possibly a mile. From being mere ledges at the mouth, 
where they run beneath the desert sands, they become in an 
instant glorious sandstone cliffs, a thousand and then two thou- 
sand feet in height, which still preserve the blush of merriment, 
though here and there the sharp-toothed winds have scarred them 
deep with caves and the sun has tanned upon their face the tear- 
drops of the rain. The floor is in spring a rivulet fed by the 
melting mountain snows, and in summer a yellow meadow of 
sand in which grow stately groves of cottonwoods and fields of 
luka cane. The canon winds and curves so frequently, but never 
without gentle preparation, that one never is vouchsafed a view 
of length, but seems to be wandering Meander's passageway, 
through a maze of corridors which have no end. As a rule the 
cliffs rise sheer from the sands, sometimes even beetling many 
feet, but often a mass of debris clusters at their base and occasion- 
ally they break into fragments as they ascend, becoming a host 
of titanic pinnacles. Gaunt pines, dwarf walnuts, chokecherry 
trees and thick-leaved shrubbery grow on the rocky slopes; gnarled 
cedars and thorny chapparal deck coignes of vantage on the walls, 
and wherever a little moisture seeps, hang garlands of ivy and the 
trumpet vine. Innumerable monoliths and pillars stand forth 
in splendid isolation upon the cafion's floor, thwarting the sluggish 
river's course and compelling it to curve on either hand. The 
grain of the rock is perpendicular so that its actual surface is 
very smooth, incomparably so, and the walls, as in all river sub- 
stances, round out each other's contours so completely that one 
can trace the lines of a cliff upon the cliff directly opposite. Their 
summits are seldom jagged, but undulate with the knolls and hol- 
lows of the sagebrush plains, which roll away on either side. The 
water raining on these heaths has trickled over the canon walls 
for so many centuries that they are streaked with broad, black 
bands of falls, and mottled with lichens and the dye of leaves. 

[146] 




A NAVAJO PATKIARCH 



[147] 



One can not know the coloring of the air, nor preconceive the 
richness of its tone until one has seen it against these canon walls, 
its liquid, azure texture overspun with threads of sunbeam gold 
or fused with the silver tendrils of the moon. 

Nor can you know the height of Heaven's arc before you 
measure it by the cafion tops and realize how far above it goes. 
In the nighttime, too, the fewness of the stars which you are given 
from the depths to see, the hour or two elapsing between their 
rising and setting, and the immeasurable distances from out of 
which they shine, will all contribute to your astonishment. At 
first you will feel inutterably minute, the smallest little bit of 
microcosm in a universe transcending university. But as you 
become accustomed to being at the bottom of a well you will ex- 
perience a thousand new sensations, each full of pleasure and a 
joy of life denied you on the mountains and the open plains. 

Except that it lies below the surface, Caiion de Chelley is 
not, however, in any sense a well. It is full of light and of action 
and the perfume of growing things. The breezes which blow 
through it are lush with the fragrance of flowers, the odor of 
peach trees in bloom and in fruit, the scent of corn pollen and the 
rosin of pines. The sunlight refracted from the cliffs and up 
from the floor of sand floods it with a white-hot radiance, the twi- 
light cools it with rainbow shadows of lavender, orange and green, 
and the night pours into it a thick, ambrosian dark through which 
the moonbeams filter hesitatingly, becoming suffused with the 
atmosphere an hundred feet before they reach the earth, so that 
they float above the head like foam upon the sea. There is always 
in the cafion, too, the noise of many voices, the song of birds, the 
cadence of insects, and the laughter and gossip of Navajos riding 
up and down. All things are fresh, all things are pure. The 
peach orchards seem just to have burst their leaves, the pines 
appear to have just husbanded their cones, the tassels of the corn 
have just broken their buds. Even the walls, seared as they are 
by time, wear a pleasant look of incompletion as if they had been 
chiseled out today and were to be polished by the master hand 
tomorrow. Yet through this newness, this garb of juvenescence, 
there runs a faded garniture embroidered by the past — the cities 
of those Unremembered People who were the caiion's first inher- 
itors. 

[148] 




A NAVAJO rATlilAKCIl 



[149] 



Wherever the sand-toothed desert winds have gnawed a cave 
into the battlements, wherever at the rocks' first separation a 
ledge or terrace has happened to remain, these ancient cities hide. 
Some are large and some are small, some must have housed five 
hundred or a thousand souls, others no more than a single family. 
A few of them nestle at the feet of the cliffs, but the majority are 
perched high, high above the ground on shelves and in crannies 
which nowadays are oftentimes impossible to reach. Indeed, it 
is a constant source of wonder how their inhabitants ever climbed 
up or down, and did not the dwellings themselves bear witness, 
the mention of them would seem a fairy tale. No one can tell 
you whence these people came, nor who they were, nor upon what 
pilgrimage they traveled at the last when suffering or surfeit 
weaned them to leave these canon walls for other hunting grounds. 
For whoever they were, they have vanished from mortal ken as 
completely as the mythical thieves in the night, leaving behind 
them only these ruined towns to tell us that they were. 

The date of the abandonment of these, even, can not be set 
with certainty. It may have been while Caesar marched through 
Gaul, or perhaps when Nineveh was in its prime, or Joseph ruled 
in Egypt, none can tell. There are, however, other things by 
which we can compose the story of their lives — the dead and the 
paraphernalia in their graves, the broken utensils on their ash 
heaps, the sacred relics hidden in their temples, and their picto- 
graphs on the caiion walls. These symbols telling of their history 
were no doubt eloquent to them, but are almost meaningless to us, 
who possess not the requisite key. Yet here and there, amid the 
circles, triangles and dots are scattered forms of easy recognition, 
rude representings of a life we also know. That herd of antelope 
in frightened flight is surely the epic of the village huntsman, 
while beneath, in that bow and arrow with the broad, black band, 
one reads the epitaph of a warrior, and, look, that maiden with her 
hair in whorls, did she not live the life of Juliet long, long before 
Verona's church bells tolled? And then those sheaves of corn, are 
they not eloquent of the harvest time? Do you not hear the fodder 
rustling in the wind? Can you not see the harvesters beneath 
the yellow moon husking the corn by the river and spreading it 
out on the rocks to dry, where the long-tailed squirrels hide? 

[150] 



But there is a pictograph greater than all the rest — the 
village trails. Here are drawings which are indeed alive, legends 
written unconsciously in a tongue which all men know, the melan- 
choly tongue of poverty. Ah, the arts of the world have been 
many, but none of them have endured. They have risen through 
riches to pre-eminence, have flourished a century or a thousand 
years, and then, on a day have come by them a people to whom 
their beauty was strange. The fault lay not with the artists, but 
with them by whom they were paid. A prince, no matter what 
his lineage, invariably patronizes art, but the forms he cherishes, 
the forms he helps create, are all of them articles to adorn the 
pageant of his person or estate, baubles to hedge him from the 
multitude, so all, however pretty they may be, pass with his name 
and are forgotten so soon as his family. "But the poor ye have 
with you always," because the race has neither a beginning nor 
an end, and only those things which the poor have made are eternal. 
The first songs were sung by shepherds at watch beneath the stars ; 
the man who was closest akin to God was first worshiped in a 
manger; bread was first baked in a little hut under a hill, and 
these trails were worn deep in the face of the rock by barefooted 
bearers of burdens, who toiled from the dawn to the darkness lest 
the rich in their plenty should starve. They received, in theii' 
time, scant honor for their labors ; let us give honor to them now, 
in ours. For while the priests composed creeds in the kivas, and 
the captains of industry and war were commissioning pictographs 
of their deeds to be painted on the rocks, these handmen and 
maidens wrote an epic of the life of their people which should be 
read and understood long after the religions were forgotten and 
the pictures had become illegible. 

Indeed, these trails have a fascination aside from their vaga- 
ries. As one sits below them in the sun tracing their wanderings 
up the cliffs to the entrance of the towns, and thence, ofttimes to 
the cafion's rim, where they give access onto the meadows and 
mountains behind, and sees how they wind and curve and flow, 
now running up a beetling crag in tiny steps and notches, then 
edging carefully around some tall abutment, next twisting like 
a corkscrew up a pinnacle to its crest, whence one must leap across 
a chasm to a ledge on the principal wall, and finally mounting out 

[151] 



of sight behind a promontory, group after group possess them 
until they teem with fanciful pageantry. Perchance there 
appears a file of warriors starting forth to war ; bright feathers 
are braided in their hair, their naked bodies are oiled and glisten- 
ing. Behind them, at the entrance to the town, stands a company 
of white-robed priests, chanting them godspeed upon their kill; 
on the house tops their wives and daughters wave good-bye; at 
the foot of the trail the children are gathered together prepared 
to shower them with daisies and the pollen of luka reeds. Slowly 
and circumspectly the warriors descend, as befits men on whom 
a trust is laid, passing midway a train of ragged, gray-haired 
women bearing great baskets of corn upon their backs, pause for 
a moment to wave farewell and disappear around the nearest bluff. 
For the time there is the silence of departure, then one hears the 
sob of a maiden, the laughter of some toilers in the fields, and 
presently high up on a narrow ledge, a lad in a cotton tunic begins 
to play upon a pipe of reeds. The notes float down upon the wind 
with soft reiteration until suddenly the sun casts over you the 
shadow of a cloud and you rub your eyes to rid them of the glare, 
smiling the while at your vain imaginings. 

It is precarious to attempt the trails, for a misstep would 
set us on a road we have no wish to follow, but the town is worth 
a deal of danger, so let us put on for the nonce the toes and talons 
of Mr. Darwin's ancestors (for, of course, no such creatures hang 
from our family tree). Even with these contrivances we may 
experience no little difficulty, for at a distance the trails resemble 
turkey tracks in snow, and a close inspection reveals them to be 
no more than shallow scoopings in the rock, too small by half for 
a cofi'ee cup to rest in. However — but we are already up. 
Perhaps those are our ancestors after all. 

No wonder these Unremembered People builded their towns 
so high. The view from any one of them is superb and is, as a 
military outlook, unsurpassed. The eye can sweep the canon 
from bend to bend, perceiving every object on its floor, every chink 
and crevice in its farther wall, and can even see beyond the rim 
across the sagebrush plains. The distance is too great for any 
arm to shoot an arrow from below ; by reason of the overhanging 
cliffs no hand can hurl a missile from above. Upon three sides 

[152] 



is a rampart of living rock, and at the front is nothing but the air. 
Providing an enemy had reached the caiion unobserved, they must 




BOXES OF THE ISIiEMKMBERED PEOPLE 



either hide until the dead of night and try the trail then in single 
file, trusting to chance to elude the guards or storm it in the light 
of day, when one could easily hold it against a thousand. 



[153] 



Architecturally, the towns resemble a pueblo, but they are 
in actual, instead of apparent, ruin. The houses, which are built 
of hand-dressed stones, have often triple stories, for these caves 
have high, cathedral roofs. Their floors and ceilings of mud- 
coated faggots have usually sagged or fallen, their walls in places 
have toppled half away, and in some instances enormous slabs 
of rock have crashed through them from above, bursting them 
outward in complete debris. The first impression one receives 




THE UNREMEMBERED CITY 



of them is that they have suffered centuries of drought, and this 
is indeed the fact, for the upper cliffs protrude so far that in time 
of storm no moisture touches them. Instead of wetting them the 
rain falls in a silver veil before their face, protecting them from 
the flurries of the wind. As a result the stones all look superla- 
tively parched ; the adobe plaster fairly gapes with thirst. But 
the dust which has settled upon these ancient cities, fllling the 
interiors many feet, brings home to one this dryness most of all. 
It is as flne as the particles of a cobweb, and if you sift a handful 



[154] 



'•:> 

""t*:' 




through your fingers, it resolves immediately into the air with a 
snap and sparkle, like bubbles of champagne. Moreover, there 
is mingled with this dust millions and millions of tiny little 
prickles, the refuse of cactus pears brought thither to serve as tid- 
bits of the evening meal, by the mountain rats, which make the 
chimneys their abode. These prickles are no bigger than the 
point of a pin, but 
they will sift through 
3^our clothes, work 
under your skin, cling 
to your hair and eye- 
brows until you feel 
as if you had lain in 
a bed of nettles, and 
desire forthwith to 
imitate the Lady of 
Coventry. 

Let the lust of 
grave-digging once 
enter your soul, how- 
ever, and you will 
bear these many ills 
with cheerfulness, for 
there is no more intox- 
icating pleasure than 
that of poking among 
these ruins for broken 
relics and mummified 
remains. You begin 
reluctantly, with fu- 
tile qualms against disturbing the ordered slumbers of the dead, 
but directly you unearth, or to be more precise, undust a chip of 
pottery or the wishbone of some prehistoric turkey, you throw 
scruples to the winds along with the cactus prickles and thence- 
forth will grub like an ant-eater so long as light permits. Your 
first unbroken olla will be as priceless as the Rosetta stone, and 
when you find an inoffensive stick you will spend entire hours 



<r^ 



==* 




THE ANTELOPE RflN 



[155] 



gazing at it, endeavoring to persuade your inner conscience that 
it was really most important once upon a time. Indeed, to dig 
among these cities is to relive forgotten fairy tales. A week of 
it will make you young again, in a world of elves and goblins, but 
it will also make of you a most accomplished liar. Soon every 
pretty pebble you notice on your walks will have a most alluring 
fascination. You will pick it up and take it home and tell your 




DinOEIiS OF UELICS 



family with beaming condescension how you found it in the cutest 
little chamber, close by the hearth, and are certain that it was an 
ancient idol or, at the very least, a puissant charm against melan- 
cholia. 

You will very quickly learn what parts of the ruin are fruitful 
and which are not, and after a short experience will no longer 
waste your time in the apartments, but go directly to the rear of 
the city and dig in the space intervening between the last house 
and the ending of the cave, for there are the dump heaps and the 



[15G] 



graves. The dead have all become naturally mummified, and are 
usually buried in a sitting posture, no doubt because of the lack 
of space in the village cemetery. The most of them possess no 
shroud, but a few, the wealthiest citizens perhaps, are either 
wrapped in coarse woven cotton blankets, sometimes dyed, or in 
magnificent robes of feathers or rabbit skins. These wear sandals 
of yucca fiber, sometimes plaited very, very fine, and have neck- 
laces of wampum, bone and turquois beads. Beside them lay 
their bow and arrows, and one mummy was found covered by a 
wicker shield. Around in jars and ollas or heaped in baskets of 
yucca twigs, are the foods prepared for the deceased to eat on 
his arduous journey to Heaven — grains of corn, meal, unleavened 
bread, pinon nuts, venison and beans; and on his breast are the 
tools his fingers used in life — bone awls and needles, pestles, 
mortars, and obsidian scraping knives, and little stone and tur- 
quois amulets, carved in the likeness of birds and animals to ward 
from him the powers of the dark, which we, by the way, are now 
impersonating. 

So soon as one begins to reconstruct their mode of life and 
culture from the evidences of these various articles, one is struck 
with the resemblance of these Unremembered People to the Pueb- 
lo Indians of today. Their architecture was practically the 
same, they buried the same commodities with their dead, they 
worshiped in kivas as the pueblans do, and from the odds and 
ends of service remaining there one gathers that their religion 
was similar, if not identical. One would seem to be justified, 
then, in presuming the Unremembered People to be the pueblans' 
ancestors, and the presumption would be infallible were it not for 
the fact that they are so unremembered. Not a single tribe pre- 
tends to a knowledge of whom they were, and the legends of none 
include a word which would lead us to suppose they were ever 
connected with them. Indeed on the other hand, most of them 
state that these ruins existed at the time when they first came into 
the land. Hence the similarity may well be accidental and merely 
an excellent proof of that anthropologic law which affirms that 
two peoples of opposite language and stock tend to evolve the same 
arts and customs when placed in the same surroundings at the 
same stage of their development. But let this be as it may, who- 

[157] 



ever the Unremembered People were they lived so long ago that 
every record of them is destroyed. Possibly centuries after they 
were driven from God's Country by the volcanoes some of them 
may have returned and formed the nucleus of the present pueblans, 
or they may have continued on to Mexico and become the Aztecs, 
or to Central America and become the Mayans, or even have jour- 
neyed so far as Peru where their descendants were conquered by 
Pizzaro. No one knows, for the trail of their migrations has dis- 
appeared, and although one may theorize to one's heart's content, 
to do so is always unprofitable. So we shall not inquire further 
into the genealogy of the Unremembered People, but simply enjoy 
their ruined cities as best we may. Besides, digging in the dust 
of these is not conducive to enlightened conversation, for if you 
are wise you will wear a bandanna handkerchief over your mouth 
and nose, and speak, when you are so imprudent as to speak at all, 
in a series of grunts very closely allied to the affectionate squeal- 
ings of the common pig. 

So let us return to the cemeteries and see what more we can 
find. It would be wrong, however, to enlarge too much upon the 
funereal aspect of these towns, for then, when you leave you will 
dream of ghosts and powdery mummy bones and forget that they 
are still inhabited. For, strange to say, they still have tenants — 
not people, perhaps, we should care to know intimately, but still 
they are very much alive and play an important role in the drama 
going on around them. But in order to meet these modern dwell- 
ers in these old cliff cities we must return for a moment to the 
Navajos, for only through them may we procure a proper intro- 
duction. 

Hundreds of these Navajos live in Canon de Chelley, their 
hogans occupying every dell where there is space for a field of 
grain. To the rest of the tribe these are known as the Chin-lin-ne, 
a name borrowed from a place at the caiion's mouth, which in 
some unaccountable manner has come to be a term of opprobrium, 
meaning a beggar or one who is penniless. Just why these few 
should be signaled out as paupers no one seems able to explain, 
and the fact is, it is extremely inappropriate. For though the 
Chin-lin-nes have, it is true, a small amount of sheep — the animal 
by which one's wealth is gauged — they are rich in many other 

[158] 



things which the men of the upland valleys lack. They farm the 
sandy bottom lands, whose moist soil yields luxuriant crops, and 
have in consequence a good supply of pumpkins, corn and melons. 
They even raise a little wheat in the more auspicious years. But, 
better than each or all of these, they possess large peach orchards, 
which bear the most delicious fruit, and the canon abounds in 
walnut trees, yucca plants and large chokecherry bushes. From 




I'ltKlIISTdHK' CLIFF rUTlHES 



these various sources they are enabled to replenish their granaries 
every year, and the sale of the surplus gives them a tidy income 
suited to their wants ; and during the harvest time they are always 
burdened with their so-called rich relations, who drop for the nonce 
the w^ord Chin-lin-ne from their vocabulary. The peach orchards 
are their most interesting possession, because the ethnologists have 
never quite decided whether they were planted by the Navajos 
from seed procured from early Spanish settlers or whether they 
originally belonged to the townsfolk of the cities on the cliffs. 



[159] 



But since the peaches themselves are excellent, we need not bother 
our heads about the ancestry of the trees on which they grew. 

The Navajos, of course, know naught of the Unremembered 
PeoiDle. When they first came into the canon, hundreds and 
hundreds of years ago, the cities were in as complete a ruin as 
today. But the Navajo must account for everything which comes 

beneath his notice, no 
matter whether it be 
an eclipse or the color 
of a darning needle's 
wings, and so they 
have woven legends of 
their own around these 
mysterious, deserted 
towns. Indeed they 
have a story to fit 
each curious rock or 
pinnacle in the cafion. 
One is the home of the 
sacred Eagle, one is 
where Coyote sleeps, 
another is the abode 
of giants, and many 
are places where 
witches hide. Super- 
stition and fear are 
everywhere. There 
are certain spots to 
which no Navajo 
could be made to go. 
others to which he makes regular pilgrimages, and others he 
never dares to look upon. Only a few short years ago they killed 
several old women in Cafion de Chelley who were accused of being 
witches, and last autumn the whole community was aroused for 
a time because a meditative youth had seen a strange form flitting 
through the dusk while bringing his ponies home. 

But it is in the ruined cities on the walls that the majority 
of these spirits and tsindis dwell, and in the most poetic, Casa 




e'ASA r.LANC'A 



[160] 



Blanca, reside the Yebitsai themselves ; Casa Blanca, or the White 
House, as it is often called, sets in a cave on the north side of the 
caiion, about a mile above where Del Muerto forks. Above the 
cave, which is fully a hundred feet above the ground, the crag 
is smooth and beetling. Below it on the caiion's floor are the 
ruins of another town, which in the time of their occupancy was, 
no doubt, connected by ladders with Casa Blanca. Nowadays, 
however, this last is absolutely inaccessible. The rock affords 




RUINED CLIFF CITV 



no foot or finger hold, and a rope suspended from the rim would 
swing clear of the cave by twenty yards or more. Thus an air 
of mystery surrounds the place, and this is enhanced by the 
appearance of the town. Unlike its neighbors, it seems in good 
repair, presenting a solid, unbroken front of masonry with the 
windows and doors showing plain and clear and the roof beams 
protruding evenly from the walls. The two lower stories are 
the natural gray of their stones, but the third story, which is 
smaller, is plastered white, and it is this which gives it the name 

[161] 



of Casa Blanca. These upper dwellings perched jauntily atop 
the rest catch and reflect the sunshine from their walls and look 
so pallid underneath the moon that it is no wonder the Navajos 
have thought them to be the hogans of their gods. 

From this tradition has grown the cult known as the night 
chant or Yebitsai ceremony. Starting in the canon from the 
legend of a dance held below the White House by the gods them- 
selves, it has spread far and wide through Navajo land, until now 
it is of frequent occurrence wherever a half-dozen huts are met 
in a vale together. The ceremony is very beautiful, and to the 
ethnologist should be interesting, for it undoubtedly combines 
many traits found in the katchina dances in vogue among the Hopi. 
Just when or how these features were retained can never be 
determined, but their presence lends credence to the story the 
Navajos tell of an Hopi woman coming to Caiion de Chelley many 
years ago from the village of Walpi in the Painted Desert. They 
say it was in the time of an unprecedented drought, and that she 
came with a starving little son in search of water. The Navajos 
made her so welcome that when the drought had ceased she pre- 
ferred to remain among them rather than return, and in due time 
was taken into the tribe, becoming the ancestress of their Hopi 
clan. 

Like all other Navajo ceremonies, the Night Chant is a 
remedial affair conducted by an Hatali over a patient to cleanse 
him of every mental and physical ailment with which he is or 
imagines himself to be afflicted. Presumably there was a time 
when the rite paid distinctive homage to the special gods it pro- 
fesses to exalt, but nowadays it has become so mixed with other 
ceremonies that oftentimes the singer himself finds difficulty in 
unraveling the threads. This confusion has come partly, no 
doubt, from the hazy notions as to how the ceremony really began, 
but mostly from the fact that the worship of these particular 
canon deities, though old enough in all conscience, is nevertheless 
a comparatively recent innovation, and having become immensely 
popular has very likely drawn into itself the broken threads of 
several older, half-forgotten rites which it has slightly altered 
and by which it has been radically changed. As a result it is 
exceedingly complicated, consuming nine days and nights and 

[162] 



ending with a public dance which lasts from moonrise until dawn. 
The most of its rigamarole is utterly unintelligible to one who 
does not know the legends or understand the Navajo customs well, 
so that it would be tedious for us to witness it in the order of its 
days. Hence, we shall not attempt to do so. 

When a Navajo has finally determined to undergo the phys- 
ical, mental and financial strain attendant upon a Yebitsai Cere- 
mony, the first thing he does is to engage the Hatali and arrange 
for that expensive gentleman's pay by wheedling his relations to 
contribute toward the cost, which never amounts to less than two 
hundred dollars. When these details are satisfactorily settled — 
and a Navajo can haggle like a Yankee — the prospective patient 
begins the construction of the sacred hogan. This requires a 
week of constant labor, for all of the logs must be freshly felled 
and barked with scrutinizing care. The lodge, which faces, of 
course, toward the east, is usually set among the trees on a knoll 
commanding a valley or mountain slope so that the glow from 
its fire at night may be seen for miles around. When completed 
a plaza is cleared before it for the dancers and a cedar corral 
kitchen is constructed at the side which is a very necessary appur- 
tenance, for all the spectators are the patient's guests. Next, east 
of the plaza which is perhaps a hundred feet in length, two cedar 
dressing rooms for the dancers are erected, and all is ready for 
the ceremony. 

The arrival of the Hatali at sundown marks the first night 
of the nine. He is given food and drink in the kitchen, and after 
supping — well, you may be sure — enters the medicine lodge, 
deposits his paraphernalia in the southwest corner, arranges his 
medicines, feathers and masks, kindles the fire, with proper incan- 
tations, and lying at ease on some blankets spread for his special 
comfort, enjoys a quiet smoke and social gossip. The ceremony 
itself begins about eight o'clock in the evening with the making 
of the wheel kethawns. The kethawns are to the Navajo what 
the pahoes are to the Zuni — carven sticks or wooden cigarettes 
made to be offered to the gods. The wheel kethawns, of which 
twelve are used, are little circles of willow stems about a hand's 
diameter across, interlaced with homespun yarn so tied that it 
will easily unwind. The twine forms a cat's cradle figure and 

[163] 



has at one end an eagle plume and a single wampum bead. While 
the kethawns the being fashioned by the singer, two young 
men are preparing themselves to represent the two war gods. 
They strip naked to the G string, wash their bodies in white 
clay, don a kilt embroidered with tinsel gewgaws, which they hold 
in place with a silver belt, borrow all the necklaces and bracelets 
possible, and finally put on the masks of the war deities. These 
are tight-fitting buckskin bonnets painted blue, which completely 

cover the head, having 
slits for the eyes and 
mouth, a knot of fur 
for the nose and a fox- 
hide sewed around the 
bottom to finish them 
off". On the left side is 
a bunch of owl plumes 
and several long eagle 
feathers cocked at a 
rakish angle. When 
the two men — or gods, 
for such by this ex- 
ternal metamorphosis 
they have for the time 
become — have receiv- 
ed their final instruc- 
tions from the singer 
they go out of the ho- 
gan and the patient 
comes in. He, too, 
strips naked and sits cross-legged on a blanket near the medi- 
cine man. When he has been properly arranged the kethawns 
are placed by him in a basket, the Hatali hands a gourd rattle 
to five or six of the elders present, who chant to their accompani- 
ment the prayer or song befitting the occasion. In the midst of 
the singing the gods come rushing in. They go up to the patient 
and, calling in his ear, unwind the twine from the kethawns, which 
he holds for them one at a time in both hands. During the pro- 
ceeding he never raises his eyes to the gods, for to do so would 




A MKDH'INK MAN 



[164] 



be a breach of deistic etiquette. When all the kethawns are 
unwound the gods go out again, bearing the strings with them. 
Their departure ends the service for the evening. Presently 
they return, take off their masquerade and dress themselves in 
their ordinary clothes, and when the singer has seen to the adjust- 
ment of the masks, he composes himself for sleep. 




THE SWEAT HOfSE 



A different but similar ceremony takes place every evening 
in the hogan until the last, each one of which is symbolical of some 
particular thing. Thus the wheel kethawns typify the drawing 
of disease from the patient's limbs; the sacred cigarettes, which 
are filled with pollen at the ends and sealed with a sunbeam 
refracted from a mirage stone, give him a clearer vision; the 
cutting with an ancient stone knife of the spruce boughs in which 
upon one occasion he is draped, cleanses him from sin, and the 
shouting in his ears restores or preserves his hearing as the case 



[165] 



may be. We can not describe each of these rites in detail, for 
to do so would take us longer than to watch them, and besides we 
have other matters, more important and entertaining, to note. 

For instance, the ritualistic baths which the patient is given 
upon each of the first four mornings of the ceremony, in as many 
different sweat houses situated to the north, east, south and west 
of the hogan. These sweat houses, or sudatories, are the custom- 
ary Navajo bathrooms, and every Navajo makes use of them on 
the average of once a month. They are miniature hogans about 
three feet high and four across and the method of bathing in them 
is unique. A fire is built before them in which a number of flat 
stones are heated to the melting point. Then these stones are 
poked into the sweat house and arranged in a circle around the 
walls. When they are placed to the bather's satisfaction he 
strips and crawls on his hands and knees within, pulling to the 
blanket flap behind him, and remains there doubled up like a 
squat toad until he is in a streaming perspiration and nearly suffo- 
cated by the heat. Then he emerges, throws a bucket of water 
over himself and the delicate operation is completed. Ordinarily, 
of course, a sweat is a very humdrum affair, but the baths 
bestowed in the Yebitsai Ceremony are all accompanied with 
pompous ritual, for they are supposed to cleanse him morally 
and mentally, as well as bodily. A pinch of pollen is sprinkled 
on each stone, the sweat house itself is decorated with feather 
kethawns and colored lines of pulverized rock; before entering 
the patient repeats a prayer, while he is within the medicine man 
sings songs, and when he comes out he goes to the hogan and 
both together say another prayer about five hundred lines in 
length, the gist of which is that the patient may always be as 
clean without and within as he is at the present moment and may 
never burn his feet on the red-hot stones. 

On the last four days of the ceremony, when the patient has 
been sufficiently cleansed of dirt and sin, occur the sand paintings. 
(The first sand paintings were carried by gods on buckskin.) 
These are the acme of Navajo art and are truly beautiful. But 
one must see them painted from start to finish in order to realize 
the artistic impulse, the striving after ideals, the hours and hours 
of ceaseless, careful labor, which go into their composition. Each 

[160] 



ceremony has its own particular set of paintings, which may be 
used for that rite alone, so that there probably exists three 
hundred or more in all. Their existence, however, is scarcely 
real, for so soon as one is finished it is erased, and must until the 
need of its use arises again, be perpetuated in the Hatali's mind 
alone. Moreover, it is not permissible to vary an iota from the 
design, each one of which is different. Instead, the painting must 




ONE OF THE SACRED 



correspond in every detail with the traditions governing its depic- 
ture, and except in the kilts of the figures drawn, where the taste 
of the painter has full play, each circle, dot and feather must be 
absolutely correct or the painting loses its curative powers and 
must be rubbed out and entirely redrawn. 

The canvas on which these paintings are drawn is a layer 
of creamy sand which is spread upon the hogan floor, making a 
background ten or twelve feet square. The pigments are the 
substances of different colored rocks — gray, black, blue, red, yel- 



[1G7] 



low and white, and the brushes, human fingers. The painter 
takes a handful of the powder and sifts it carefully between his 
thumb and forefinger on to the sand, following the necessary lines. 
The paintings are all of them very complicated, having beside the 
central figures of the gods a variety of minute ornament, so that 
it takes several men working under the guidance of the singer 
many hours to complete a picture. Some of them portray only 
the gods or the sacred animals or flowers, but usually there are 
examples of all three. It is very interesting to watch the 
highly conventionalized figures grow slowly upon the sand to 
their full perfection, and when the painting is finally done, one 
is filled with wonder that so beautiful and intricate a design can be 
carried indefinitely in the cupboards of a human mind. What 
a joy it must be to the singers to have such a, wealth of beauty 
always at their command. 

But the painting, no matter how resplendent it may be, is 
only an incident in the service of which it is a part. No sooner 
is it finished than masqueraders of the gods enter and destroy it 
by touching every part of every god and sacred image, and laying 
their hands on the corresponding portion of the patient's anatomy, 
thus presumably saturating his person with the corporeal and 
spiritual excellence of the gods. When their act of benediction 
is over the layer of sand is scraped into a pile and dumped into 
blankets to be used on the morrow or thrown away if there is for 
it no more present use. 

But to the stranger in Navajo land it is the dance which 
takes place on the last night of the Yebitsai Ceremony that is 
most alluring, for it is so full of movement, color and music that 
he need know nothing of the Navajo customs or language to 
thoroughly enjoy it. The dancers are all dressed to represent 
the different Yebitsai and dance in sets of nine or fourteen, each 
company endeavoring to gain the popular acclaim of being better 
than the rest. Their dress resembles that of the gods we met 
in the service of the wheel kethawns — indeed these deities are 
four of the number — only it is more showy, more elegant. The 
bodies have a thicker coating of paint, the kilts contain more 
trinkets to make them glitter in the firelight, and the masks are 
decorated with extra feathers. A foxskin dangles from the 

[168] 



waist behind, their moccasins are adorned with silver buttons, 
streamers of tinsel hang from their arms, and a pouch festooned 
with silver ornaments is slung from their shoulders. Spruce 
boughs are wound around their wrists and ankles and they carry 
a spruce twig and gourd rattle in their hands. Their dance is 
a kind of stomping hop, exceedingly difficult to imitate, and they 
move in double lines facing one another, going backward and 
forward and down through the center, as in the final figure of 



KLt Biliiiiiti 


'n t ^P^^^M 


hMP 


HK 




B 



AXfKSTHAL CODS AWAITING THK APriiOAC H OF TIIK DANCERS 

the Virginia Reel. While they dance they sing the Yebitsai songs 
in a high and piercing falsetto key, shaking their gourd rattles to 
mark the rhythm. As soon as one set has sung all the songs it 
knows, it retires to the dressing rooms in the rear of the plaza 
and another set takes its place. At the arrival of each new com- 
pany the medicine man intones a prayer and the patient sprinkles 
a bit of sacred meal on the mask of every dancer. Then the gods 
sweep the ground with their spruce wands, first upon one side and 
then on the other, crying "hwoo-hwo-hwo-whoo" as they do so. 

[169] 



Next the head Yebitsai, whose feathers flare like a turkey's tail, 
points to the moon with his panther quiver, the clown in the rear 
twists his minkskin into grotesque contortions, and amid the 
muffled shaking of the rattles the first dance begins, rising slowly 
into the full, chaotic frenzy of the song. 

This may all sound harsh, barbaric, even weird, but in reality 
a Yebitsai dance is a spectacle of soothing symphony. There 
is in it a wonderful blending of colors, the mingling of many 
opposing sounds. At one end of the plaza stands the hogan, 
fretted by the moon shadows of the leaves. At the sides and 
foot sit and stand an earnest, close-packed throng, numbering 
at the very least three thousand souls. Young men and elders, 
mothers and maidens, children and babies in arms, they have 
gathered gradually for many days from mountain, desert, canon 
and upland valley, far and near. They are wrapped in brilliant, 
many-tinted robes, from out whose folds peep bits of wampum, 
silver and turquois ornaments, and are always shifting, moving 
here and there, watching the dancers with jubilant attention and 
speaking only in whispers. Their sad, mysterious faces and 
lustrous black eyes are thrown into sharp relief by the many bon- 
fires of greenwood logs which light the scene with a blood-red 
radiance. These fires fence the plaza on each side, forming a 
barrier to hold the crowd from the dancers and keeping them 
warm. The blue smoke from them curves upward in the quiet, 
frosty air, obscuring the sickle moon and stars, and drifting about 
the waving plumes of the dancers until they themselves almost 
seem to be afire. 

As set after set performs and disappears only to have its 
place immediately taken by another, one loses count of the fleeting 
hours, nor notes that the night has waned and the morning star 
is rising in the sky until suddenly a whisper runs like a summer 
breeze among the throng and the dancers who are dancing cease 
their chant and turn to mark the blushes of the half-awakened 
day. Then a silence falls on all the multitude as dew from the 
lashes of dawn, and presently through this stillness one hears the 
rustle of many moving feet. Then, the dancers not dancing sing 
softly the bluebird's chorus to the rising sun : 

[170] 



Do-li-ani, Do-la-ani-i, 
Ay-a-hi-o-wah-ho-\vah 
Hab-e-ni-yah, hab-e-ni-yah 
Hah-whay-jan-a, 
Ah-she-e, wan-a, 
He-a-ha-i-yali. 

Softer and slower come the liquid notes. As they float away 
in modulated cadence the people withdraw into the woods until 
they are lost to sight among the trees. The fire dies down to ashes, 
the sweet song ends, the dancers disappear, and then suddenly 
the sun leaps to the crest of the hooded, purple mesas. His golden 
fingers linger a moment in the rose and silver sky, then gently 
part the needles of the pines, run down the tree trunks, caress 
the trampled grasses and finally point in sudden splendor straight 
at the Yebitsai lodge. There in the doorway the patient stands, 
a suppliant and alone. His head is uncovered, his face is bowed 
in prayer, and he lifts on high a basket of meal as a votive offering. 
As his shadow falls on the lodge behind, the forest is stirred by 
the morning's benediction, and the birds break into song. 

So is the Yebitsai ended and another day begun. 







4t <t^t sviF 


"^^ <!|J^| 


-■*. --ij^^mm^t*^^' 




^ 


... ...f 



[171] 




W AI.I'I — rllll.llKKN UK Tin; SIN 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE SANDS 




N the western part of the Navajo Reservation and 
surrounded by it upon every side, lies the old 
Spanish Province of Tusayan, the home of another 
race who call themselves the Hopi, but are more 
generally known throughout God's Country as the 
Moqui Indians. This psuedonym is not, however, 
a very welcome one, for it means a dead man in 
the Hopi tongue; nor can its origin be traced 
although it was probably bestowed by a quondam enemy because 
these people, like the Acomans, have chosen to dwell in towns on 
the mesa tops. 

The land of the Hopi is in the Painted Desert, that marvelous 
jointure of the sun where scarce a cactus grows. It is a region 
of sea-worn buttes and thirsty sands, of ragged cliffs and sloping 
terraces, of washes and wind-scarred battlements of stone, each 
one of a different shade, a different texture, so that together 
they reveal a multitudinous complexity of livery and form. The 
painter of the great Grand Cafion's walls, which touch the desert 
on the west, would seem to have poured his paint pots here when 
his larger task was done, letting his pigments willy-nilly spill 



[172] 



across these wastes until they flared and flamed into a bloom of 
radiant colorings. For they are a garden whose adamantine 
flowers are eternal, whose stony blossoms never fade. Day after 
day these open with the dawn, glow through the morning like a 
rainbow meadow, droojj for a little while at noon under a scintil- 
lant coverlet of gold, shimmer at sunset and at evening pale, fold- 
ing their petals slowly for tomorrow, beneath the milk-white laces 
of the moon. 




KlW N (IF W AI.I-I 



Into this wonderful desert from the north three gaunt, gray 
mesas come like the thieving fingers of some giant hand whose skin 
has been swollen and crinkled by superhuman toil. The first and 
most eastern is pointed, tapering at the end ; the second, six miles 
west, is crooked, and the third, some fifteen miles beyond, is 
pointed again. They are bold, barren crags, about two hundred 
feet in height, with ne'er a tuft of living green upon them any- 
wheres, their unfertility being the more apparent by the oases of 
cornfields and cottonwood trees which dot the washes between. 
The sequacious sandstones of which they are composed have been 



[173] 




liOAD TO WAI.l'l 



[174] 



so crazed by the continual firings of the sun that their precipitous 
steeps are all in ruins and rise in utter desolation above the yellow 
dunes which hug them round. So solitary are they, so alone 
amid these palpitating sands that they appear like headlands 
fronting a curdled, voiceless sea. 

Yet, on their crests, which are reached by trails made ardu- 
ous by many fallen boulders, are perched the seven Hopi villages. 
The jumbled houses of three of these towns are strung along the 
rib of the eastern mesa. At the head of the trail is Tewa standing 
guard at a wide-sprung gap; adjoining it but slightly farther 
on is Shishomgavi, and on the very tip where the ledge is most 
narrow and most precipitous, is Walpi, the most beautiful of 
all, a round, high pyramid which seems from below so insecurely 
placed that one notes in passing the temper of the wind. The 
middle mesa also boasts three towns. The two larger, Mishon- 
gavi and Shipaulavi, the place where the peaches grow, set like 
warts on the knuckles of the rock, while Shimopavi clings to a 
pointed butte on the mesa's curving phalange half between. On 
the third or western mesa, which is the one most deeply imbedded 
in the shifting chameleon sands, Oraibi, the largest city, stands 
alone. Had we only the power to place to our credit the income 
of Old Father Time, we should visit each one of these cities in 
turn, for so we ought to do, since each is individual and has a 
charm denied the rest. As it is, however, we must keep to the 
desert until Oraibi is reached lest we arrive there too late to 
witness the crowning Hopi ceremony. 

But fortunately the road is not long, nor supremely 
interesting, for it leads through the desert mile after mile, past 
gullies, ledges, rocky knobs and cornfields which hide among the 
dunes, so that as we journey we may inquire a little of these 
children of the sands, who declare they come from an underworld 
through a passage which opened and afterwards closed in the 
caiion of the Little Colorado River, at the place where it empties 
its muddy waters into the deeper gorges of its sister. Taking 
account of a settlement far west of Oraibi in Moencopi Wash, 
the Hopi number altogether about four thousand souls. Their 
government is practically the same as that of the Acomans or 
Zunis, whom, however, they do not resemble in appearance. The 

[17ol 



majority are short of stature, especially the women, but now and 
then one sees a man standing several inches over six full feet, 
with a body borrowed from an old Greek god. Their eyes are 
large with irises of shining black; their faces oval, with noses 
slightly thickened at the end ; their bronze skins look like velvet, 
and their hair, which the men cut short, wears a constant gloss 
imparted by the yucca suds in which they wash it. They are a 
people who make little use of gesture, but all of their movements 




MKKLT .SeENE OV WALl'l 



are graceful and facile, and they step with the nonchalant, easy 
swing of a barefoot race, appearing rather to glide than walk. 
In dress and custom they are more conservative than the other 
pueblo tribes, and in the main have kept themselves free fromi 
the taint of the American. On the lirst mesa, which is nearest 
to white men's settlements, you will, it is true, occasionally 
see a ready-made pair of trousers or a Chicago shirt, and the 
citizens of Walpi are even not averse to altering their ceremonies 
so as to attract a horde of eastern tourists, for they have learned 

[176] 



that these mean an increased revenue, but at Oraibi and on the 
middle mesa the Hopi look with displeasure upon anything tend- 
ing to lower their primitive barriers. The men wear the V-necked 
shirt like the Navajos, and loose white cotton trousers slit up 
the outer side to show the fringe of their green and scarlet garters 
\\-hich bind their coarse, blue knitted stockings just below the 
knee. These stockings never have a foot for the very good 
reason that if they did they would be a constant mesh of holes, 
since the men never don their moccasins, save for the most import- 
ant festivals, and the mesa rocks and desert sands are sharp. 
A brilliant banda caps their costume, and if the winds blow cold, 
as they often do toward evening, they wrap themselves in a 
striped blanket. 

The women wear squaw blankets of black, home- woven wool, 
edged with a band of red or green, and go barearmed, bare- 
footed and barelegged. On holidays their blankets are white 
and red. and the marriage dress of a Hopi girl is a robe of white, 
made whiter by being rubbed in meal, and embroidered with 
suns, and birds, and flowers in green and yellow yarn. The 
matrons do their hair in a double braid, binding it like the Zunis 
in scarlet tape, but the maids twist theirs, one above either ear, 
into two whorls whose diameter is often a foot. These whorls 
represent the blossoms of the squash, the Hopi emblem of vir- 
ginity, and lend the wearer a demure and bashful look at odds 
with their curiosity. Their large, lustrous eyes peep at one 
from the corners of the wheels with a frankness which is rather 
disconcerting, but show them a camera and they show you in- 
stanter their backs, for they believe a photograph robs them 
of their souls. The children are never hampered by a garment 
of any kind until they are twelve or sometimes even older, and 
so are forced to wipe their sticky fingers upon the sleeves which 
nature gave them — a method of procedure which has the advan- 
tage of saving the laundry bill. 

The religion of the Hopi is a joyous, merry one, crowded 
with festivals, dances and feasts, and has but one grim rite — the 
snake dance we are presently to witness. At the head of their 
polytheism stands an unknown sovereign god, whose breathing 
quickeneth all things and maketh them to grow. Below this 

[177] 




HOri HEI.LKS 



[ITS] 



being, about whom no legends twine, are what might be called 
the atmospherical gods — the sun, the moon, the earth-mother, 
the four winds and the hoarder of the rain. Lower still are the 
beasts and birds of magical parentage and power, the turkey, the 
antelope, the bear, the coyote, and several others, at the head of 
which conclave is the great plumed serpent, ruler of the under- 
world. Besides these there are the ancestral gods, whom we may 
liken to the Jewish angels, and the katchinas, analogous to our 
fairies and our trolls. These are not, however, a pigmy folk, but 
human in their size, and are represented in the dances by the mas- 
queraders in the most fantastic headgear and attire. 

The powers which the katchinas possess are difficult to deter- 
mine, for they seem to be as elastic as themselves, and a katchina 
can hide in an ash or fill a room at will. Their company is 
legion, nay, more, is without end, and the Hopi have no definite 
conception of their appearance. Their presence is denoted by a 
gust of wind, that is, a little spiral whirl of sand so common in 
the desert lands, otherwise, except to the most faithful, they 
are invisible. From middle autumn until early summer the 
katchinas are gracious enough to live in the villages, inhabiting 
the eaves and the ingle nooks, and protecting the Hopi from 
harm. But during the remainder of the year, through July, 
August, September and October, they are all away on a pleasure 
trip which takes them to an uncharted mesa somewhere in the 
North. Their absence, however, does not minimize their ability 
to interfere in any matter arising in Tusayan. They would 
seem to control the minor destinies of their people wherever they 
may be, for all those petty occurrences which we lay at the doors 
of good fortune or ill luck, the Hopi ascribe to the katchinas. 
For instance, if a Hopi stumble, it is over a katchina, and if he 
does not stumble, wherever by rights he should, it is a katchina 
who has smoothed the road. If caterpillars kill his corn, it is at 
the instigation of a mad katchina, and if he harvests a crop of 
large and juicy ears, why a katchina took pains in the nighttime 
to fill the stalks with sap. Thus, no matter how an affair turns 
out, a katchina receives the praise or blame. Ordinarily their in- 
fluence does not transcend the right to aid or thwart the fruit of 
human industry, but in time of stress or public calamity, their 

[179] 



powers seem to wax until in pestilence, drought or war, they are 
as puissant as the gods. Nevertheless, the katchinas are not 
immortal, although impervious to mortal harm, for five or six 
of them are known to be dead, having succumbed to some divine 
disease. In the masquerades, however, these few are given an 
equal honor with the living, a course of action eminently wise, 
for since the katchinas, though individuals, possess no distinctive 
individuality, how is a poor Hopi to know which ones are dead 




A DANC'K AT (lUAIlil 



and which are living? The chagrin of an undestroyed katchina 
can easily be imagined if it were classed for a moment with the 
company of its deceased relations. During the winter months, 
when the katchinas are resident in the villages, dance after dance 
is given to propitiate them. The gayest of festivals are these, 
which end in a public feast, and are full of frolic and song. But 
during the summer, when these pleasure-loving fairies are away, 
the Hopi steal time for sadder ceremonies, and enact their litany 
for the harvest rains, whose culminating spectacle we are pres- 
ently to see. 

[180] 



By now, unless we have had mishai), we should have arrived 
at the mesa of Oraibi, and be toiling on foot up its steep, stony 
trail. The pueblo is a close-packed town of some eleven hundred 
souls — chaotic, mysterious, dirty, droning with life. It is 
placed so near the edge of the overhanging rock that it seems the 
trenchant desert winds might easily topple it onto the dunes; 
yet they come and go, and Oraibi still remains, a white oasis in a 
world of blue and gold. To the east of the mesa, a mile or so 




MAIN STREET IN WALI'I 



away, a sluggish wash occasionally flows southward, bearing its 
freight of mud from the northern mountains to the Colorado 
River. Along the banks of this inconsequential stream is the 
only show of green in all the land, for here the Oraibians plant 
their slender crops of corn and melons. Beyond these fields rises 
the dim, low outline of the middle mesa with Shipaulavi recum- 
bent on its crest, but so hazy is the image of this pueblo that it 
is really a mirage, so save for the knowledge of neighbors, Oraibi 
stands amid these glittering sands, solitary and unsistered, utterly 



[181] 



alone. Yet in spite of this alluring setting, at first sight you 
will not be prepossessed. The town appears sc tame after 
Acoma, and Zuni is far more beautiful in form. Indeed, unless 
you be a paragon, you will berate your guide for a worthless 
fellow, and demand that he return you instantly to Walpi, which 
was enchanting even from below. But have patience until you 
enter the city, then you, too, will fall to worshiping its charms. 




A WAMM INTERIOR 



Seven streets run through it from north to south, each one 
of which is broken by a plaza containing several kivas. Radiat- 
ing from these into every quarter are hundreds of little alleys, too 
narrow at times for a burro to squeeze through, these are in 
places bridged across with Venetian balconies. The houses are 
built of stone and adobe, plastered with a white, almost luminous, 
clay, and are very irregular, being now high and now low, and, as 
a down-easterner would say, "quite tolerable between." Some 
stand completely by themselves, others crowd against one another 
as if they were playing push, and hence their outlines, bestrewn 
with topsy-turvy chimney pots and beehive ovens, present a 

[182] 



bewildering array. The lowest stories are generally used for 
stables or granaries, so that the dwelling proper is up a ladder 
upon a terrace, piled with firewood, bedding and garden produce. 
Within, the rooms are light and airy, containing the same appoint- 
ments which we found at Acoma; only here the windows are 
never glazed, and in the doorways, doors are seldom hung. Thus 

the desert breezes blow 
through them with 
abandon, jostling the 
little katchina images 
which hang from the 
tw'ig-lined ceilings, 
knocking the fetich 
ears of corn against 
one another playfully, 
rustling the strings 
of crimson chilli pods, 
and flapping the blank- 
ets strung along the 
pole. One can go 
through the chambers 
from one house to an- 
other, now climbing up 
a flight of stairs, now 
scrambling down a lad- 
der, now stumbling 
through darkened pas- 
sages, now mounting 
stiles between ter- 
races, often traversing a dozen domiciles without descending to 
the public street. On the roofs, where the people mostly congre- 
gate, are altars to the sun, on which are idols carven of cotton- 
wood and painted in yellow, white, green and black, from the 
tips of whose headdresses fly feathers to propitiate the winds. 
And deep down in the cellars are niches of colored stone on which 
are drawn in red and blue the spiders who obey the earth-mother's 
commands. 




A W ALPl iiorsE Tor 



[183] 



You may look at these all you please, if you find them, for 
the Hopi are not a secretive folk like the Zuni, but the soul of 
smiling hospitality. They will call to you as you pass in the 
street, greet you with a courteous "lolomai" and ask you to taste 
a bit of their watermelon. When you enter a house, a blanket 
is at once spread for your use, and a drink brought from the olla 
in the corner. If it be the dinner hour you are bidden to help 




ZUNI WOliSIlIl'ERS 



yourself to the corn meal boiled in husks, the pike bread, the tor- 
tillas, the mutton stew and other delicacies set on the floor in 
bowls and mats. While you eat, with your fingers of course, 
they will converse with you in their musical language, and should 
you fail to understand, will manage some other way to convey 
their meaning. They are continually laughing, but never at the 
stranger, and singing snatches of songs. They will even try to 
teach you their primitive games, and will show you their cere- 

[184] 



monial dresses and masks if you evidence interest therein. In- 
deed the Hopi will make you welcome any and everywheres except 
in the sacred kivas, and from these you are politely asked to keep 
away, for even they themselves, unless they happen to be priests, 
may not enter. Of course this being so, they arouse your keen- 
est curiosity, and since each of the seven plazas contains at least 
two of these underground temples, with their long, lank ladders 
descending, and their odor of incense and song, you meet them so 
constantly on your wanderings that at length you are prone to 
believe they only exist to tax your stock of patience. 

If this, however, falls too low, there are at hand many reme- 
dies to relieve the strain the kivas put upon it. For everything 
about you is novel and quaint. In the course of your social calls 
you will discover strange methods of housekeeping your ancestors 
discarded long ago. For example, you will rejoice to learn that 
water is not needed to wash dishes because they can be cleaned as 
well by rubbing them in sand, that ashes are an excellent substi- 
tute for yeast, that corn on the cob is better baked than boiled, 
and that if the baby is to be put to bed, he will be quite as com- 
fortable if placed in a blanket whose corners have been securely 
tied together and hung on a peg in the wall. You may also, if 
you wish, have your hair shampooed in yucca suds, and your face 
smeared with moist, red earth to protect it from the sun. When 
these ablutions are performed, you may watch the men drilling 
turquois or weaving their blankets and cloths. It was the Hopi 
who taught the Navajo to weave, yet strange to say, this art today 
has fallen among them very low. The blankets are thick, with 
a loose and easily parted woof, and their only decoration consists 
of broad stripes of navy blue and brown. The squaw dresses 
are of closer texture, and made in a basket pattern, which gives 
them the appearance of having been woven in tiny squares. But 
even these can not compare with those of fifty years ago, and the 
only textile products which keep their previous excellence are the 
garters, sashes and ceremonial kilts, which are pure white, em- 
broidered in scarlet, black and green. The weaving is done entire- 
ly by the men, the women confining themselves to the moulding of 
pottery, for which Nampeyo, a Tewan, is especially famous, and 
the plaiting of plaques. These plaques are fashioned in coils 

[185] 



from the desert grasses and bound with strips of luka reed. The 
designs on them, for they are tinted in many colors, are very beau- 
tiful. Sometimes they are triangles, stars and pyramids, and 
often pictures of the katchina dancers or drawings of the gods. 
Oddly enough, the plaques of Oraibi are different from those of 
the other mesas, being made of small, split willow twigs sewed to 
a willow frame. These plaques are the Hopi dishes being put to 
every conceivable use to which a plate or platter would be put by 
us, and the tribe receives a goodly sum by their sale to the tourists 
who come to see their August festival. 

By the time you have purchased your supply of these and 
Avheedled the children out of the major portion of their dolls, 
which are wooden, painted and rigged to represent the katchinas. 
with headdresses of feathers and fanciful masks, it will be the 
supper hour, and you will climb down from the mesa to sit around 
the camp cook's fire and count the cost of your various acquisi- 
tions. Tomorrow is to be crowded with events, for the Snake 
Dance takes place in the village, and since to see its opening cere- 
mony you must be stirring an hour before the dawn, you will 
practice for once the maxim which bids you be early to bed. But 
ere you retire to sleep in your wagon sheet beneath the brilliant 
stars, it would be well for you to hear a little of this desert 
festival, while you have leisure to listen to a partial exposition 
of its complicated rites. 

If we are to arrive at any understanding whatever of the 
Snake Dance ceremony, and appreciate what it means to the Hopi 
people, we must remember that it is a prayer for rain. One can 
read chapter after chapter in ethnologic books regarding its an- 
thro-morphic, psychologic and anthro-psychic phases, but do not 
believe these even if you should know the meanings of the terms 
and could spell them out if asked, for they are all embellishments 
of the authors' imagination. Why there should be this constant 
co-operation among scientists, so called, to befog the layman's mind 
in this matter is incomprehensible, unless it arise from their 
desire to outstrip the vacuous erudition of their fellows. How- 
ever that may be, we can not do better than repeat that the entire 
Snake Dance ceremony, from beginning to end, is simply and 
solely a prayer for rain, real, invigorating, cold, wet rain, which 

[186] 



since time out of mind has fallen from the clouds, and usually 
descends upon the earth. 

This fact is easily understood, when it is remembered that the 
Hopi live not on a mountain height or in a river valley, but in a 
desert where raindrops are as scarce as are diamonds in a wash- 
erwoman's hair. Indeed, except in the middle of winter, it never 
storms in the Painted Desert for more than a half-hour at a 
stretch, and during the summer, when providentially for them, 
the katchinas are away, there are often periods of weeks or even 
months when ne'er a cloud of the smallest size is visible in the 
heavens — when there is naught but the pale, blue sky, so brittle, 
so lustrous, so crystalline, that it tintinnabulates and rings when 
the sunlight strikes it like a bell. At such times if a cloud should 
dare appear and try to cool the fevered pulses of the earth, the 
sun will steal its showers as they fall, so that the philanthropic 
little cloud goes sailing by with trailing draperies of misty sheen, 
which water nothing but the heated air. And even when the 
rain does come the greedy sands suck in the moisture ere it has a 
chance to spread, and sparkle immediately after as dry and scin- 
tillant as before. The washes, too, which drain the impervious 
mesas in the north, although filled with a temporary flood, present 
on the morrow, hard, crackled bottoms through which one can 
walk dry-shod. 

Thus the Hopi live in the ever present danger of being 
literally shrivelled by the sun. As they see their tiny alkaline 
springs, which seep from the mesas where they join the sands, 
growing shallower day by day, and their cornstalks turning to 
fodder long before the ears upon them are ripe, as they see their 
peaches dropping from the trees while their skins are still with- 
out a bloom, and are told that a single jug of water must do a 
family if possible half a week, it is no wonder that they turn in 
penitence to the miser god of the rain and flay their souls and 
bodies with solemn litanies that he may be moved to refresh the 
burning temples of the earth-mother and give her the strength 
to yield them the sustenance they need. 

The Snake Dance is this solemn litany. The ceremony has 
its inception in the legend of Tiyo, the snake youth, as he is called. 
This lad was like most lads, inquisitive, and perceiving that the 

[187] 



feathers he cast upon a river floated ever downstream and 
returned to him no more, he determined to embark upon it also 
and see for himself whither the waters went. After drifting for 
very many days in his cottonwood canoe, he was borne into a 
dark, mysterious cavern and presently found himself to be in the 
house of the Spider Woman, whose children were the Hopi's an- 
cestors. This good dame took a fancy to Tiyo, and after intro- 
ducing him to the Sun, whom he accompanied one day upon his 
travels, finally revealed to him the magic words which should 
unlock for him the mica gates at the entrance to the underworld. 
In this unfruitful, pestilential place, Tiyo met the Great Plumed 
Serpent, the ruler of the realm, who was exceedingly angry to 
learn that a mortal should have dared to trespass with impunity 
where even the katchinas might not come. Nevertheless, after 
some occult persuasion and a doughty threat or two, he compro- 
mised with Tiyo and consented on the promise of his immediate 
departure, to grant him any wish that he might name. But when 
Tiyo asked that his people might be given knowledge of how to 
procure rain, the Serpent was astounded at the audacity of such 
a request and demurred'against gratifying it, saying that to learn 
such secrets, Tiyo muse go to the rain god himself, who was really 
much more powerful than he, and who would vent his displeasure 
in no uncertain manner upon the ruler of the underworld did that 
unimportant personage presume to betray his awful confidence. 
Tiyo, however, was not to be gainsaid, and so finally to be rid of 
him the serpent escaped from his predicament by donating to Tiyo 
two magical women whom he ordered to teach the Hopi the way 
to bring the rain. 

When Tiyo reached home with these two young girls, he very 
considerately married one and gave the other to his brother. But 
we are not concerned with his matrimonial ventures, of which, 
by the way, he had, like all mythical heroes, his fill. After the 
honeymoon was past, these two women took their husbands and 
went out upon the desert, where they captured, with painted 
wooden tweezers tipped with eagle's-down, all the snakes they 
could find in a four days' search, putting them temporarily in 
buckskin bags for keeping. On their return to the village these 
snakes were taken to a special kiva and placed in a sacred jar. 

[188] 



Afterwards they were washed, dried in warm sand and lulled 
into harmless slumber by the waving of wands and the delicate 
beating of drums. Then the women sang prayers to them, and 
taking them out of the kiva, danced through the streets of the 
village, holding them in their mouths. At the conclusion of the 
dance they gathered the snakes in their arms and carried them 
forth to the desert again, letting them go that they might carry 
the prayers to the god of the rain. Immediately after, the women 
disappeared, without so much as asking by-your-leave, and then, 
when a thunderstorm followed their departure, the Hopi knew 
they had been shown the way to procure the desired rain. So 
ever thereafter, in August, they repeat the solemn rite. 

Of course this ceremony, as enacted in the villages today, is 
greatly amplified, and possesses a complicated ritual, but should 
the two snake women return, they would find the salient features 
had not been altered. The snakes are still gathered as of yore, 
washed and dried in the same manner, hushed by the same 
methods, taught the same prayers, and the priests dance with 
them in the public square as they danced then, arrayed in similar 
attire. The diff'erent services have now, however, so many extra- 
neous, conventionalized frills that the ceremony requires nine days 
and nights for its celebration — nine days and nights of secret 
supplication in the kiva, of which the dance is but the concluding 
public spectacle. The date of the ceremony is determined by the 
departure of the katchinas from the villages — its beginning 
being eighteen days after the day following their annual hegira. 
This is governed by the moon, and takes place in July when that 
orb is at its full. Thus allowing for the nine days, which the 
ceremony itself consumes, this calendar puts the dance proper 
in the time of the harvest moon, when the crops are ripening and 
are most in need of rain. There are always two and sometimes 
three dances held in Tusayan each year, but the schedule is so 
arranged that there is never more than one upon a mesa, the 
celebration rotating between the villages. Consequently a Snake 
Fraternity, and its allied order of the Antelope Priests who assist 
in the rite, exists in every town, but strange to say, each one of 
these is independent of the other branches. This fact accounts 
for divergencies found in the minor details of the ritual, as it is 

[189] 



practiced by the different societies, and also for the varieties of 
spirit in which the participants approach the dance. Thus Walpi, 
which is most accessible to American influences, has changed the 
rite to a gorgeous festival in which the dancers are befeathered 
and beribboned and do not hesitate to wear necklaces of ten-cent 
mirrors strung about their necks. But Oraibi, on the other hand, 
has kept its office very pure, and there one can still see the spec- 
tacle in all its original grimness and majesty. 

And, although the dance lasts but half an hour at the most, 
it is well worth the journey to Tusayan to see, for as an instance 
of religious exaltation the Hopi Snake Dance is on a par with 
the Passion Play of Oberammergau. Indeed, it is finer in many 
ways than this drama of the Crucifixion, for the actors and 
actresses in that only portray the death of a fellow-being, while 
these black-faced brothers of the snake fearlessly take their own 
life in their hands and play with it in the plaza. There are a 
few harmless bull snakes and racers among those which are 
used, but the deadly rattlesnake is in the majority, and indeed 
could this species be gathered in sufficient quantity in the Province 
of Tusayan none other would be employed. For the bite of these 
the Hopi have no certain antidote, yet they do not extract their 
fangs or venom. The reptile is left in full possession of all its 
fatal powers, and knowing that these are unimpaired the dancers 
put them in their mouths, gripping the snakes between their teeth 
about four inches from their heads and letting them twist and 
wiggle as they please, dance up and down the square. Yet a 
dancer is scarcely ever bitten, and even when bitten never dies. 
If you ask a Hopi the secret of the charm by which this living bite 
of death can be rendered so harmless, he will tell you it is love, 
and of all the prolix explanations of this phenomenon, this appears 
to be the best. To the priests these snakes are holy, the sacred 
messengers of the gods, and a Hopi would no more injure one than 
you would kill your child. From the time they are caught sight 
of in the desert until they are turned loose in it again nothing 
is done to anger, torture or injure them in any way whatever. 
Instead, they are constantly soothed. They are handled with 
great gentleness, never being picked up hastily or set down with 
a thump. In the bath each one is washed separately, the water 

[190] 



being laved upon it with the fingers, and care being taken never 
to rub the scales the wrong way, and this same consideration for 
their feelings is followed throughout. 

Nevertheless, it is improbable that these acts alone induce 
the extraordinary quietus in the snakes. Undoubtedly hypnotism 
plays an important part. But this is an unconscious resultant, 
and is not due to any effort of the priests. Rather is it the 
outcome of their love. The long confinement in the jar and dark- 
ened kiva, the beating of drums and the incessant singing of 
songs in their ears, even the constant handling, must render the 
senses of the snakes less acute than they ordinarily are, so that 
when at length they are suddenly brought forth to the light of 
day the change stuns and dazzles them. Then, too, the religious 
fervor of the priests, their absolute unquestioning faith, their 
belief in the divinity of the dance, their ten days of fasting, their 
continuous smoking, the sacred medicines they take, and the shut- 
ting out from their minds of every secular affair, all these things 
considered together must raise them to a state of exaltation, where 
they are partially, if not completely hypnotized, and this may 
react upon the snakes. 

But no matter how we explain the circumstance, the fact 
remains that these rattlers are passive at least, if not friendly, 
and that the dancers dance with them unafraid. Besides, no 
explanation can lessen the wonder of the scene, for that grips 
you so strong and holds you so amazed that it can be, that nothing- 
matters but the spectacle. 

We have been so long discussing this Hopi prayer for rain 
that now the maxim we boasted of following, for once must go the 
way of so many other of our good intentions, for if we are to see 
the foot race from the plain to the mesa crest at dawn, we must 
be up and stirring. This race is run for the snake priest's trophy, 
and competed for by old and young. The winner receives a sort 
of divine permission to be lazy, for he is given a sacred gourd 
filled with holy smoke and water which, when he buries it in his 
fields, acts as a fetich to aid the growth and fruitfulness of his 
crops. But the brilliant stars are becoming dim, so we must hasten 
to the mesa. 



[191] 




---,;^' 



Ni)i»i 



..--i*f 



«V*- 



Jrtfal ■ 



THE PIKISLO OF ORAIBI 



CHAPTER X. 



THE SNAKE DANCE 

N TUSAYAN the night is long a-dying. It loiters west- 
ward, hesitatingly disengaging its black veils from 
the sands and trailing their gossamer behind in a 
violet crepuscule, a twilight which varies constantly 
in tone. Many dulcet, melodious murmurs fill this 
l^reauroral hour, for the drowsy desert is waking from 
its sleep and preening its multicolored rocks to greet 
the high lord of the day. At length the dawn, pale 
rose and silver, drapes the desert in a silken glow that spreads 
and brightens with the moments 'til the sun vaults golden-armored 
above the far horizon, flinging to all the largess of his light. 

However, if you are up betimes — and who on this day of 
days would lie abed? — it will still be dark when first you reach 
Oraibi. And yet not dark, for though the moon be set, and in 




[192] 



this harvest season it sets early, the sky will be all luminous with 
stars; and so thin and pure is God's Country's air that these 
suffuse it with a vaporous radiance. A radiance too pallid to cast 
shadows, it is true, but one which bestows on the whitewashed 
houses a phosphorescent lustre, and lends to the desert a frosted 
coverlet. In the village the ladders loom like spectres above the 
terraces, and the distant desert pinnacles appear like elfin ships 
upon an elfin sea. 

The village also has a fairy atmosphere. Though one knows 
the katchinas are far away intent on summer frolic in the North, 
it were easy to imagine them returned, for one can almost see 
them tiptoeing through the air. Now and then their cobweb 
garments catch the twinkle of the stars, now and then their dew- 
drop coronets burn with opalescent fires and their fairy feet go 
pit-a-pat adown the scented currents of the breeze. Peeking and 
peering they come and go, elusive as the thoughts of yesterday, 
touching your hair with a soft caress, hanging an instant pendent 
from your ear, lighting upon your lashes, spying at your eyes, 
capricious little brownies of the air. The daylight faces and 
the daylight forms are all in slumbrous repose. The plazas are 
empty and quiet, the lanes are hid in gloom. No laughter-loving 
children throng the ladders, no busy elders work on the house 
tops, no burros browse in the narrow passageways. The watch- 
dogs lie on the terraces dreaming their watchdog dreams, the 
querilous turkeys roost on the corral fences, the high-priest sleeps 
on the kiva's sacred floor. Within doors the fires have died down 
to a coal and the matete stones are cold and damp. Nor sight 
nor sound disturbs the peaceful quiet ; save for the even breathing 
of the sleepers all is still. Yet presently one becomes aware of 
mystic hands unraveling Oraibi's tangled scarf of dreams. The 
little katchinas, if such they be, are pricking their people into 
wakefulness. A whisper here, a gentle tickle there, the tapping 
of a thought upon the head, a magic nettle rubbed along the hands, 
a fairy laugh, a pinch, a gentle tweeze, and it is done. Oraibi 
is astir. 

One by one the good folk arise and stretch themselves, rub- 
bing the dream-dust from their eyes. Then man and maiden, 
old and young, each goes to the family altar to say the morning 

[193] 



prayer. Sprinkling a bit of meal upon the floor, they bow their 
heads in humbleness, asking the earth-mother to grant them 
through the day "a clean mind, a pure heart and a charitable 
hand" — surely a beautiful supplication, for it requests those 
attributes alone which help a neighbor on. This simple service 
over, they go about their morning tasks. The bed blankets are 
folded and laid away, the fire is stirred and the breakfast set 




THE SAfHK.I) Tl UKKYS 



a-stewing. Gradually voices and bustle replace the night's repose. 
Candles lighted in the rooms flash signals at one another across 
the squares. Dogs bark at dim forms passing upon errands, 
wrapped in their robes and meditations. Groups appear on the 
terraces and house tops. Here some girls break into joyous song, 
there a priest fans the ash of a shrine into flame. Sheep bells 
tinkle in distant corrals, and turkeys, scattered from their perch, 
make loud complaint in a near alleyway. 

Yet for all the noise and action going on about you, Oraibi 
still seems a phantom town as you walk its starlit streets, a mush- 

[194] 



room city of the night which the sun will dissolve with his coming 
into the desert again. Not until you reach its southern plaza 
does aught occur to displace this fantasy, and this comes only if 
you wait 'neath the hood of a covered alley for a while. From 
the snake priests' kiva beside you there rises the muffled beating 
of a drum, and down in the antelope kiva beyond they are chant- 
ing a song. Soft and low, soft and low, the murmured cadence 
comes and goes, now swelling to a chorus deep and strong, now 




THE BECUN'NTNG OF THE SNAKE PANCE 



dying to an echo of the breeze. Its music draws taut the cords 
of mystery in which Oraibi at this hour stands, holding them 
ready, as it were, for circumstance to snap. And, lo ! the circum- 
stance appears. Into the plaza there comes a file of men, a loin 
cloth their only garment, a single feather is in each one's hair, 
and in their arms they carry their native shovels, rakes and spades. 
These they lay on the antelope kiva in silence and depart, believing 
in their simple faith that the gods who will come with the morning 
to speak with their brothers, the snakes, will bless the implements 
and their honest toil. 



[195] 



Their going wakes you from your fantasy and Oraibi appears 
once more a sedentary town, for were not these men the runners 
and went they not out by the portal which leads to the mesa's 
edge? Then it must be near the moment for the race, and thither 
you had better follow them and sit you down at the head of the 
trail to wait in patience for the dawn. 

As yet no faintest light is visible, but the morning star has 
risen, clear and calm, and all the other stars are drifting west- 
ward evenly, but fast. No cloud is in the sky and it is cold, cold 
as a maiden's bosom after death, and still, so still that one can 
hear the pretty baby voices of tomorrow bidding good-bye to their 
mother, yesterday. When the east, which was black a moment 
gone, turns silver, their laughter rains upon you in a dew, and a 
timid zephyr, wakened from its sleep, stirs from its cranny in 
the cliff and sings an aria to the dying night. 

Sitting alone on the high mesa's brim with the infinite spaces 
above you, the quiet town behind, and beneath and before you the 
desert of dark stretching away into eternity, the little zephyr 
seems indeed a friend, and inadvertently you turn to glimpse it 
as it pirouettes away. It can not stay to keep you company, and 
so you strain your ears to catch its going. With gay insouciance 
it trips to the head of the trail, poises the veriest instant on the 
crest, and then goes dancing down it joyously, clearing the crickets 
from the course on which the sacred race is to be run. This 
begins in a grove of cottonwoods which stand by the banks of the 
shallow wash, two miles or more away, and thence, advancing 
across the desert to the dunes, meanders among these and the 
shattered stones which litter the mesa's base, breaking from 
these at last to climb the cliff in a flight of crooked stairs that 
have been hewn by hand from a fissure's side. It is a hard trail 
tedious and steep, to which you have invariably paid, when walk- 
ing, a toll of half a dozen rests, and therefore it transcends belief 
that even these fieet-foot children of the sands should choose 
it for a trial of speed. For a moment you think you must have 
been mistaken in the place and are just on the point of leaving, 
when a sharp, uncanny noise disturbs you suddenly. It sounds 
like a pencil on a slate and seems to be directly at your feet. 
Instinctively you look below upon the trail, and there a white- 

[196] 



robed priest is kneeling on the ground. You can scarcely see 
him in the silvery dark, and his actions are almost indiscernible. 
He seems to be rubbing some substance between two stones, in 
the manner in which the women grind their corn. Presently he 
rises and, gathering his powder in a bag, comes up the trail. 
Two women meet him at the top, dressed in white blankets bor- 
dered with red, each bearing in her 
arms a sheaf of cornstalks bound by 
a tendril of summer squash. Their 
faces and bare arms are painted with 
white lines and in their hair are 
^^^^ twined bright wreaths of flowers. 

%^I^Eili A ^^^^ ^^ ^® growing lighter, that you 
"^^^^^^^ see so plainly their laughing eyes and 

wampum beads? You turn once more 
toward the east, and there above the 
black hulk of the middle mesa runs a 
rose ribbon, first herald of the dawn. 
It is but a streak as thin as a 
vein of fire, yet from it imperceptibly 
has spread a twilight over all. The 
desert now is dim, still vague, still 
somber, nonilluminate, a sea of shad- 
ow rolling without bourne, but on 
whose wave crests ever and anon ap- 
pear the semblance of forms. A hill, 
a butte, a pinnacle, they rise, show for 
a moment and then pass as quickly, as 
completely as they came. Only the 
wash forbears to fade and flows amid 
its pearl-enameled pall of trees, a silver serpent of the sands — those 
sands, which now no longer are asleep, but restive, vibrant, throb- 
bing with ecstacy. From the deep purples of the depths they 
run through lowland violets, hyacinths and blues to lavender and 
lilac on the heights, shimmering all the while like veils of irides- 
cent silk. As the dawn widens more and more, stretching its 
rainbow fingers farther west, they steal each color from it as 
it wanes, and spraying it on their diaphanous folds, reflect it 




SNAKE PRIEST 



[197] 



back in richer, deeper hues, until, when all the heaven is aglow 
with orange, red and saffron in the east, with apple-green and 
yellow near the zenith and amethystine at the fringe of night, 
they are a field of tarnished gold embroidered o'er with a thousand 
liveries. Sapphire, emerald, ruby, pearl-gray, topaz and mauve, 
they riot through them each and all, blending one tint with another 
so exquisitely that the desert becomes a choral of coloring. Indeed 
so harmonious are their shadings, so impalpable is their theme, 
that one hears the strains of music in their motion, a tremulous 
organ prelude swelling with each change. So, when the first 
primrose flush of day appears and a mocking bird breaks into 
song among the dunes below, his tune seems part of the desert's 
melody. His first note quavers, rich and clear; long, long he 
holds it, passionately, strong, then suddenly it quivers and is still. 
But ere it dies a wild caprice of trills catches its echo and reborn 
it flows in a mellifluent cadence, higher, higher, until it sings the 
crescendo of delight. On, on, the mocking bird warbles his ave 
to the morn, pouring his heart, his dappled wings, his breast into 
the living, liquid strains as if he himself were but a rhapsody too 
pure, too lovely, too "intime" to last. And such, indeed, it seems 
he were, for soon, like waves receding from an ocean shore, his 
carol sinks and softens, sighs and croons, ending at last in a plain- 
tive tremulo. 

So sad, so touching, is his closing bar that tears well suddenly 
into your eyes, and soon it seems the desert, too, is weeping for 
its songster and his song. For out afar upon its wastes, there 
in the south where sweet winds have their home, a mist has come 
to being unawares. Yet it is too pellucid for a mist, rather 
an airy nothing spun from star dust scattered through the night, 
an incense risen from the glad bird's song, it drifts across the 
desert silently. Straight to the headland of the middle mesa 
it sweeps without a stay, divides before its frowning countenance 
and turns asudden toward Oraibi as to home. A moment and 
the silvery wash is hid, the fringe of trees, the cornfields, then 
the dunes, and lo ! it is careening at your feet. A moment more 
— a moment? Ah, how quick! — and it is curled about you 
like a shroud, obliterating all things utterly. The earth, the sky, 
the white-robed priest, the maids, all, all are gone and you are 

[198J 



left alone once more upon the mesa top. The white mist seems 
to lift you from the rock and bear you upward in its arms to dizzy 
heights beyond the reach of morning and the sun. The sense of 
being leaves you and you float without volition through ethereal 
space. Yet other presences are by. You hear their whispers, 
the shuffle of their feet, you feel their garments brush, feel their 
breath. But strive as you will to once perceive this invisible com- 
pany, you can not, till the mist dissolves into the hard, clear crys- 
tals of the air as swiftly, as instantaneously as it came. Then you 
find that the whole of Oraibi has come to the mesa's edge. Men. 
women and children, a thousand strong they stand, wrapped in 
their blankets, the dawn-light in their eyes, with parted lips and 
faces turned in rapture to the east, afire now with flashing, inex- 
tinguishable flames. 

Beneath, the desert also is await, graceful and supplicant, 
at the door of day. Rich, royal colors splash its sands, dapple 
its rocks, enamel its wide vales, but rich and royal as they are, 
even the heavens can not fan their red and purple ashes to a blaze. 
They glow and smolder, but they will not burn ; and so the desert 
lies outspread like a rose window curtained by a cloud, its land- 
scapes dim, its rare hues somnolent. Its hymn is sung, its service 
is complete, and now it kneels in sweet humility, abiding the bene- 
diction of the morn. Suddenly comes the summons to arise. 
Across it shoots an oriflamme of light, and darting to a slender 
pinnacle, transfigures it to gold. Then springs forth another, 
and others, flashing from butte to butte, an arm of innumerable 
spears splashing the rocks with fire until they are changed to 
fountains of aureate spray, sprinkling the sands with yellow 
diamonds and dragging the shadow from the depths to dance 
bacchante revels on the hills. Faster and faster the brilliant 
shafts course westward, impaling height and hollow on their points 
until at last the desert lies open beneath them like poppies revealed 
in ripened fields of wheat. Oraibi, however, in still in the purple 
shadow cast from the bulwark of the middle mesa, and thither 
come all the rear guard of the night. But even this final refuge 
is in vain, for suddenly the earth tips, trembles for its balance, 
and then falls pell-mell into the east. For a moment the roofs 
of Shipaulivi stand out in silhouette, for a moment the wash is 

[199] 



brazen, for a moment all is dim, so headlong, so impetuous is its 
flight, and then the miracle has come. The sun leaps clear of 
the horizon and in his sudden shower of molten gold the day is 
born full-breasted from the timid fledgling dawn. 

For an instant the people stand mute before the glory of 
this sacred revelation. Then, with uplifted arms in unison they 
hail their risen god. "Tawa, Tawa," they cry, 'The Sun! The 
Sun!" and opening their blankets let his light envelop them with 
warming radiancy. The madcap echoes of their shout ring on 
the rocks and out upon the plain. When they reach the grove of 
cottonwoods by the wash, the runners break from cover in a mass, 
and like a string of arrows start along the long, steep trail. At 
sight of them another shout is given to welcome the beginning 
of the race, and one and all press forward eagerly. Indeed, a 
pandemonium is loosed. It seems this silent, sturdy folk have 
suddenly gone mad. Sashes and fillets are waved high in the 
air, blankets are tossed impatiently to the ground. Men and 
women embrace one another in their frenzy and slap the backs 
of their neighbors with open palms. Gray hair is brushed from 
wizened foreheads that age-dimmed eyes may see the better, places 
of vantage are struggled for with zest. Children and boys 
scamper here and there, turning handsprings and somersaults, 
playing at leapfrog, and jumping up onto unsuspecting backs. 
Occasionally a lusty brave throws back his head and yells, "Ai-a ! 
Ai-a!" and presently from down the trail the piercing cry of a 
runner answers him. And all the while the two corn maidens 
stand demurely by the flight of steps, holding their cornstalks 
crossed to make an arch, and the white-robed priest beside them 
chants a barbaric melody. 

Nearer and nearer the fleet-foot runners come, tapering into 
a line as the slower lag behind. Through harvest fields, across 
the even plain, it seems but a moment until they are in the dunes. 
Now, you can see the sunlight glint on their naked bodies, now 
you can see the feathers in their hair. Presently they are past 
the dunes and charging up the first stiff rise, where the shattered 
mesa boulders impede their way. In and out and roundabout 
these they dash, yelping like coyotes on the scent, never lagging, 
never flagging, but on and ever on, striving with all their might 

[200] 



and main to overreach the sunbeams on their path — for should 
they outrace these but for an instant, in that time their spirit 
wins to immortality. At last, with a shout of triumph, the leader 
sets his foot upon the stair. Up, up he comes, two, three steps 
at a leap, his bare feet seeming scarce to touch the rock. The 
second man is just below, so close he could trip the leader with 
his hand. Suddenly the populace is still, awed into silence by 
the presence of such rivalry. For the second man is gaining on 
the leader, inch by inch. Now the twain are poised upon the self- 
same stair; now they are racing neck to neck with only a dozen 
steps to climb between them and the goal. Together their painted 
arms swing back and forth, together their feet are raised, together 
fall. Six of the final steps are passed, then eight, then nine. But 
one is left when the leader's arms reach forth and touch the waving 
cornstalks. He has won. 

For an instant he lingers there in victory, then tossing his 
head in pure joy, speeds onward to the village for the trophy 
awaiting him in the snake priest's kiva — the rain god's holy 
gourd. You would follow after if you might, but the people block 
your way. From under blankets and dresses they bring forth 
cornstalks, squashes, melons and chilli pods, and brandishing these 
in one another's faces, begin a merry game of tag. In a twinkling 
all is hubbub and confusion, a melee of bobbing heads and waving 
tassels. Round and round and roundabout they scamper, the 
men pursuing the maids and the maidens chasing the men, each 
striving to gain possession of what the other holds. Each man 
the maidens bring to earth is soundly trounced with moccasins 
and sashes, and every maiden captured by a man is roundly kissed 
in payment for his pains. These mishaps are greeted with shrieks 
of laughter by the elders, who themselves add to the riot by slyly 
tripping both parties at every chance. Even the little children 
join in the scrimmaging by snatching the blankets from the ground 
and flinging these over everybody's head. Soon the cornstalks 
are all torn to tatters, the melons are smashed, the chilli pods are 
scattered over the rock, and most of the squashes are bouncing 
down the trail impeding the laggard racers and oftentimes knock- 
ing them down. But for half an hour the frolic goes gaily on, 
neither side pausing to inquire whether they be ahead — for the 

[201] 



fun is all that matters, the tussle is all that counts. At last, 
however, one by one they all grow tired and desist, and picking 
whatever remains of their belongings from out the litter on the 
rock, they saunter back happily to the village. 

If you hurry after them you may be in time to see the winner 
of the snake race come forth from the kiva, the sacred gourd held 
tightly in his hands. But when you have watched him start again 
on a run for his distant fields you have seen the last ceremony 
you may witness until the dance itself in the afternoon. 

You will find plenty to interest you, however, for this is 
the day Oraibi entertains, and hence the entire town is in commo- 
tion. Strangers come hither for the dance, pervade it from end 
to end, and are almost as varied as they are numerous. There 
are Hopis from the eastern mesas and Moencopi-Wash costumed 
in white with crimson sashes, Navajos, hundreds of them on horse- 
back and afoot, bedecked in the family silver and their finest 
wampum beads, Havai-Supais, Zunis, Acomans, some Mexicans, a 
couple of missionaries, a brown-f rocked Franciscan Father, ranch- 
men and cowboys in blue jeans and sombreros, schoolmarms, 
scientists, Apaches, Mormons, and most conspicuous of all, a 
group of tourists from the East. These last you look upon with 
great displeasure, for they spoil, with their sunshades and their 
slang, the local color of the scene ; but, sh ! — it is barely pos- 
sible they are finding the identical fault with you. 

The townfolk themselves are busy making everybody wel- 
come and preparing for the public feast which terminates the 
snake priests' five-day fast. Train after train of burros arrive 
from the fields laden with melons, squash and corn. Youths come 
riding in from the range having a freshly slaughtered sheep across 
their saddle horn, or perhaps the dripping quarter of a steer- 
Even pedestrians are packing in meat and vegetables on their 
backs to swell the common store, and wagons toil slowly up the 
cattle trail piled high with firewood — a luxury in this desert land 
where there is not a tree. On the house tops the wives are baking 
bread, in the rooms their daughters are grinding meal, chatting 
the while with their brothers, who have been requisitioned to mix 
the dough, or their granddams, who sit crosslegged on the floor 
tending the babies or shelling beans. Hither occasionally come 

[202] 




AX AUDIENCE AT A SNAKE DANCE 



[203] 



the priests, either to wash and oil their hair (for their bodies must 
be as cleanly as their minds) or to search for a missing part of 
their dancing costume. Voices are hushed at their approach 
and eyes grow wistful remembering the sacred side of all this 
merrymaking. But the priests stay only an instant, hurrying 
back again to their kivas lest they miss some of the many secret 
rites. At the opening of each of these kivas there stands a 
stalwart guard to keep the curious away while the snakes are 
being washed and dried or lulled to sleep with crooning melodies. 
The irrepressible children alone dare to make mock of his solem- 
nity, even snatching a peep whenever his back is turned. At his 
threats, however, they scamper away over roofs, up the ladders, 
through the narrow lanes, knowing full well he can not follow 
them, and are ready for the next impulsive prank. They will 
run you a race for a stick of peppermint, they will wrestle for 
you, tumble, even box, and if no elders happen to be near, offer 
to dive for pennies in the spring. Wherever they go is trouble, 
wherever they are is noise. The dogs bark, the burros bray — 
as who would not if his tail were pulled? — and the fault-finding 
turkeys strut about voicing their deep displeasure at such hilarity. 
Amusement, laughter, bustle is everywhere, and so there is more 
than enough to catch your fancy and make you forget the long, 
slow-footed hours. 

But in the afternoon, when the mesa's shadow has lengthened 
almost to the wash, there comes a pause in the turmoil, a lull in the 
occupations. Families assemble in the homes and donning their 
gayest holiday apparel, wend their way silently to the snake dance 
square. This lies at the southern extremity of the village, close 
to the high cliff's edge. It is a large, rectangular plaza, slightly 
sloping and having a rough, uneven, rocky floor. Tall dwellings 
hem it in upon three sides, their terraces affording ample room 
for all the spectators. The fourth side, free from buildings, 
allows a sweeping view of the circumambient desert far beneath. 
Two streets come into it upon the north, and a narrow, covered 
alley from the west. Close by this last is the snake priest's kiva, 
and opposite it at the eastern end, the kiva of the Antelope Fra- 
ternity, allied participants in the snake dance rite. Usually this 
plaza is deserted, for often the gods sleep here, but now a motley 

[204] 




THE BE.MiKU OF Till: WAR t:OD'S BOW 



[205] 



company fringe its edges, clustering on the house tops and ter- 
races, perching upon the ovens and chimney-pots, and even over- 
flowing into the alley and streets. Now, too, a kisi or wigwam of 
green-leaved cottonwood boughs stands midway between the kivas, 
its apex reaching slightly higher than the lank ladders protruding 
from their tops. From overhead, Tawa (the Sun), the fisher of 
men, is casting his tangled net of beams, turning the house walls 
into burnished gold, sparkling on the silver kisi branches, mellow- 
ing brilliant blankets and brown skins, sweeping the silent square 
with brooms of gold, drawing all things into his yellow seine and 
making them glisten and shine, flaring, flaming, enframing this 
rainbow knot of life against the pink and purple desert and the 
turquois sky. 

Presently from the snake priest's kiva comes forth a solitary 
white-robed priest bearing the bag of reptiles in his hand. These 
he deposits carefully in the kisi, closing its opening with his 
blanket, and then, after laying a polished board over a hole before 
it in the rock, retires whence he came. This board represents, 
nay, is, indeed, the doorway to the underworld where the Plumed 
Master of the snakes abides, and seeing the priest put it in place 
sends a shiver of awe among the throng and a gentle stir of eager 
expectation. A moment after a slender youth, naked except for 
a loin cloth, and having his body painted white, emerges from the 
Antelope kiva at the other end of the square and, taking the plumed 
and feathered War God's bow from off its ladder, waves it aloft 
thrice three times to the sun. 

At once from the kiva beneath him arises the rattle of gourds 
and one by one the twenty Antelope Priests climb their ladder and 
walk in single file into the square. They are naked except for 
a white cotton kilt embroidered around the edge with red and 
green, but their tall, lithe bodies, painted a snowy white from 
head to toe, or streaked with zigzag lines, are so adorned with 
gaudy ornaments that their scarcity of dress is not apparent. 
Clusters of blue and yellow feathers are in their long, loose hair, 
necklaces and chains about their necks, and bracelets on their 
arms. At their side hangs a thick fringed sash of white, knotted 
at the ends, and behind a foxskin dangles, its bushy tail trailing 
on the ground. Anklets of cottonwood leaves trim their mocca- 

[206] 



sins, and the leader has a wreath of them in his hair. Tortoise 
shell rattles are tied below their knees, painted gourds are held 
in their hands, and on their cheeks are patches of bright vermilion. 
One also carries a bowl of water and one a basket of meal. As 
they march down toward you with slow, with almost hesitating 
steps, you gain an impression of graceful movement and gorgeous 
coloring. Three times they circle the plaza, going as close as 




nrliINC: THE DANCE 



may be to the throng, and stamping each time upon the polished 
board before the kisi to tell the gods that they are there. Then, 
forming into line before the kisi, they sprinkle meal upon the 
ground and chant a prayer, shaking their rattles gently to mark 
the rhythm, and swaying their bodies evenly to the rhyme. 

Soothing, seductive, lulling, the murmurous supplication 
drones its monotonous cadence through the plaza, smoothing the 
delicate web of your meditations and dusting pretty daydreams 
from their tissue, daydreams of sagebrush prairies and desert 
sands. You think of the dawn, of the beauty of the day, and 

[207] 




SNAKE DANCE 



[208] 



recall nights spent in reverie with the stars. Then, by and by, 
there creeps into the chant a deeper note, a more pathetic strain. 
At first its resonance is too low to change the soft, initial harmony, 
but swelling in volume and power with each reiteration, it drowns 
this utterly at last and surges into a song of lamentation, a wild, 
barbaric, awful threnody. Gone are your daydreams now, your 
idle hours, fragrant with grasses, honey-sweet with dew, for 
here is hunger, thirst and tribulation, here are the sorrows, 
agonies and griefs of these barefooted children of the sands. 
Never again will Oraibi seem to you the same glad towm it was 
a moment gone, for now you know the pity of their lot, now you 
perceive their lifelong battle with the God of Hell. Ah, the sad 
pictures that the music paints upon the sunbeams in this sacred 
square, pictures of cornfields shrivelling in the sun, of dry stream 
bottoms gaping for the rain, of rocks cracked wide by heat, of blis- 
tered sands, pictures of women wailing by their dead, of babies 
asking for a bite of bread, of men grown weak through famine 
wandering afar into the desert after water, stooping beneath an 
overhanging cliff to catch the tiny seepage in their cups, and bear- 
ing these home untasted to ease the sufferings of their little ones. 
Can the gods be so cruel? Can living be such pain? Turn to the 
faces framing these pictures in, turn to that mother by the alley- 
way, that youth by yonder maiden, any, all, and read the confirma- 
tion in their tears. 

For they are sobbing now, these simple folk who but so short 
a while ago were making merry in their homes, aye, sobbing 
softly to themselves. Yet still the row of painted priests intone 
their miserere, and ever and ever its burthen grows the sadder 
until at last it sounds the grief eternal, the pitiable crying of the 
dead. Then, suddenly, without warning, without sign, appear 
the twenty black brothers of the snake. Forth from their kiva 
they come as if a wind herded them upward from behind, and 
rush like demons down into the square. Seldom it is such awful 
forms appall the sight of men. Their bodies, grown gaunt with 
fasting, are coated with soot and daubed on the forearms, thighs 
and breasts with blotches of lurid white. A dirty, red-brown 
apron girds their loins, having green and yellow serpents painted 
on it, and around the bottom a row of leaden bells. Red mocca- 

[209] 



sins are on their feet, leather bands with a horsehair fringe on 
their arms, and a single strand of wampum about their necks. 
Save these and the tuft of purple feathers tied in their matted 
hair, they wear no ornaments, but though they had thousands the 
number could not hide the ghastly horror of their countenance. 




CHIEF DANCER 



For these, blacked as their bodies are with soot, are rimmed at the 
mouth with a ring of bluish white, through which their teeth grin 
at you frightfully. Yet, withal they look like the spiders who 
guard the midnight highway into hell, there is a splendid majesty 
in their stride, and their eyes shine with a glorious, unconquerable 

[210] 



faith. Three times they circle the plaza, quick and fast, then 
turning on a sudden in their tracks, stop by the kisi, facing the 
Antelope Priests. A moment, all immovable they stand, then 
brush the board with the eagle wands they carry in their hands, 
and swinging slowly into time, join in the litany. So soon as 
their deep bass voices swell the chant the Antelope Priest who is 
wreathed in cottonwood comes forward from his fellows, followed 
close by the bearers of the water and meal, and walks to the end 
of the rows where he is joined by the head priest of the Snake 
Fraternity. Then these four pace up and down between their 
singing brethren, sprinkling meal and water upon each and bless- 
ing them with two long eagle feathers. This office over, they 
return, each to the place apportioned him in the lines and the 
chanting goes monotonously on. But soon the measure changes 
and the priests sway faster than before. A foreign note has 
entered into it, a note of fear of savagery, like the cry of coyotes 
baying at the moon, or the screech of winter winds among 
the pines. Scarcely more than a tremulo at first, it comes in an 
instant to dominate the song and drowning the wail of agony and 
grief, crashes its martial music through the square. Strange 
voices call from out the melody, shrill, piercing voices, barbarically 
bold, that strike through the crust of centuries to your soul 
and make your blood flow fast. Long unremembered passions 
grip your flesh, desires lain dormant for ages awake and beat 
upon the chambers of your brain. The smell of blood, warm 
blood, is in your nostrils, the itch to kill on your hands, the longing 
to snatch a live fish from the stream, to bend the mighty antlers 
of the stag, for this is the ancient war song of the race, the slogan 
of those hairy hordes who roamed in the first tall forests a-hungry 
and afraid. The lust of life is here, the joy of action, the untamed 
spirit which has the strength to say, "no matter what mine heri- 
tage of sorrow, I, even I am alive, keeper of field and forest, warden 
of night and day, lord of the birds and the beasts and the grasses, 
and captain of the seas. Let those who will bewail their lot, so 
shall not I, who am free of the good, green mighty earth and 
master of it all." So rings the call for courage, rising higher, 
and the people answer with uplifted heads. Piercing, vibrant, 
ever shriller, it soars, discordant far above the reach of harmony, 

[211] 




THE SNAKH PlilEST 



[212J 



ending at last in a scream — a yell so loud, so chill, so deafening 
that it splinters the golden sunbeams into atoms and cracks like 
a whip the echoes of the square. 

When its last reverberation has floated far away among the 
desert sands and all is still once more, a Snake Priest stoops and, 
raising the flap of the kisi, enters it. The blanket falls behind 
him noiselessly and again all things are quiet, all is still. Then 
suddenly his long, bare arm is thrust between the leaves and one 
of his brothers steps forward from the throng to take the writhing 
rattler from his hand. He receives the reptile eagerly, without 
fear, and smoothing its coils with patience, places it gently in his 
mouth, biting it firmly just behind the head and letting its gray- 
green body dangle free. Again and again the painted arm 
appears, each time with another snake until the requisite number 
is supplied. Then the Antelope Priests, who have not broken 
line, resume their chant softly and the dance begins. 

The Snake Priests leave their kisi two by two, the one who 
carries the rattler in advance, the other behind with one hand 
on his shoulder ready to brush the fangs from his face with a 
pair of eagle plumes or catch the snake with the feather pincers 
should it chance to fall. Thus always together, never separate, 
the twain go round and round the plaza, treading a jerky, hoppity 
step, sometimes circling close to the spectators, sometimes keep- 
ing to the center of the square. At first they move slowly, almost 
as in a trance, but by and by a frenzy masters them and they 
careen like drunken madmen wildly to and fro, rolling their heads, 
waving their arms on high and stamping their feet like sledges 
on the ground. 

This dance with death lasts only half an hour, if so long, yet 
the first fifteen minutes seem an eternity. The leaden bells on 
the dancers' aprons jangle dully out of tune, their eyes flare up 
like signal lamps from behind their ghoulish, painted faces, and 
the snakes writhe angrily in the air twining their fat, gray bodies 
at times about the bearers' necks or catching the pulsating rattles 
in their hair. When a dancer comes near you, you can see the long 
white fangs protruding from the reptile's open mouth and his 
black tongue darting in and out between them, licking the very 
paint from oif his cheek. The horror of his danger turns you 

[213] 



cold, for those two ivory fangs spell instant death, and shudder- 
ing with fear you look away lest, God in Heaven! you should 
see him bit. You note how the shadows have lengthened, how the 
sky is all green and gold, and across the flaming desert watch the 
sun sink out of sight behind a bank of roseate clouds that lie like 
dragons low on the horizon. But always your gaze comes back 
unto the dancers, drawn to them by a luring, mystic spell, and 
each time it returns your frightened eyes are the less eager to 
wander away. The men with the snakes fascinate you, they 
seem to be mingled in one. Flesh of each other's flesh, they are 
blood of each other's blood, neither inhuman nor human, but 
beings apart. Now the dancers have snakes not only in their 
mouths, but twining on their arms, held in their hands and even 
twisted and knotted at their waists. Now, too, the dancers stag- 
ger and stumble as they dance, and their eyes are fixed in a cold 
and glassy stare. Can it be that they have been bitten or is it 
that their souls have left their bodies and entered into the snakes? 
And why is it you long to be dancing out in the golden square, long 
to fondle a snake and desire to feel it lie against your breast, to 
hear its strident rattle in your ear? You can not tell, but some- 
how the dance no longer rouses fear. It is, all of it, beautiful, 
rhythmic, even the snakes with their mottled scales and exquisite 
sinuous coils. Suddenly comes a dread that it will cease. Not 
yet, ah, not yet, you keep saying to yourself, and pray a strange 
prayer in your heart, a prayer akin to that your fathers spake 
when they walked in the forests at evening wondering if they 
were men. You hear what the white priests are singing, you 
know what the black priests think and you feel by the shake of 
their rattles that the good snakes understand. But will they 
tell the tale straight to their masters — remember it word for 
word? And will the gods whom they go to respond? And when 
are they going? Tomorrow? Today? In an hour? Now? 
But see, a dancer is drawing a wide, white circle on the ground. 
What can it mean? And look, the twenty dancers are dropping 
the snakes within it one by one until they become a writhing 
pyramid. Then in a trice they pick them up again, each dancer 
taking several in his arm, and turning, run directly from the 
square. Ah, the snakes are going now, going down to the under- 

[214] 



world to carry to the Great Plumed Serpent the Hopi's prayer 
for rain. The good gods grant they keep them safe in perfect 
memory. North, south, east and west the dancers go, far, far 
into the desert where the rattlers have their homes. The chant- 
ing of the Antelope Priests quivers and quavers away, the Snake 
Priest comes forth from the kisi bearing an empty bag, and 
Oraibi's summer litany is done. 




HXAKK DANt'E 



As you trudge down from the mesa in the pearl-gray twilight 
turning into dark, you can not quite believe it to have been real. 
It seems more like it was a garish vision, a daydream, imbibed 
from the desert, a mirage of the hot, pulsating sands, but suddenly 
the stars above are hid and the dull voice of the thunder bears 
witness of its truth, while on your cheek you feel a drop of the 
oncoming rain. 



[2ir,] 




CHAPTER XI. 



THE GRAND CANON 




UT it is in the sunset hour that the canon is 
supreme. For then the air unravels the skein 
of its seven mighty cliffs, and spinning the colors 
with the sky, weaves therefrom a fabric of divine 
beatitude. Ere doing this, however, it awakes 
the canon from its afternoon siesta, withdraw- 
ing the amber haze of dreams from its warp of 
monuments and strings these upon the loom of 
the gray-green plateau. Next it takes the woof of clouds o'er- 
head and dyes their vapors in the sun until they are a pageant 
of changeful cloth of gold embroidered with lavender and green 
directly at the zenith and shading through mauve and saffron 
into scarlet in the west, where they hang like the smoke of incense 
low above the blue-black waving shuttle of the trees. Then, when 
all the threads of earth and sky are blended to its liking, it gathers 
these together in the basket of the winds and begins this tapestry 
which shall, when finished, be worthy of God's Country's twilight 
marriage with the day. 

But now the sun has touched the far horizon and hovers there 
light-footed for a little space of time, as if unwilling to depart 



[216] 




CLOID EFFKCTS IX CAN'OS 




TIIF. AXGKI.S' fiATKWAY 



L217] 




GRAND VIEW TRAIL 



from such a fair demesne. Part- 
ing the curtain of the clouds 
whose crimson folds are fringed 
with gold, he lingers, looking back- 
ward toward the San Francisco 
Mountains, and gilds their sum- 
mits with a kiss whose flaming 
passion shall o'erlay their snows 
long after he has gone. As he 
stands there like a lover the eve- 
ning winds go by and, gathering 
in their perfumed fingers the 
needles of his rays, bear them in 
sheaves through the canon to hem 
its monuments. 

Vishnu is there in violet, 
Newberry in rose. The Angels' 
Gateway in orange, the Palisades 
in blue, together with all the others 
we have long since found and 
known — Sheba and Solomon, the 
Viking Ships, Ayer's Peak and 
Zoroaster, each one appareled in a 
diff'erent hue — but with these 
such a host of undiscovered monu- 
ments that one can scarce distin- 
guish their familiar silhouettes. 
Indeed, there is no rock in the 
caiion, no single spear of stone, 
but what has lifted up its crest for 
this vesper symphony and rises 
now from its purple shadow in un- 
submissive splendor crowned by 
an aureole of air. As the mo- 
ments pass new forms are found 
on which to drape the silken rai- 
ment of the sky, until finally 
the gray-green meadows are mili- 

[218J 



tant with towers and the canon seems a city whose dwellings 
have been fashioned from infinite precious stones. The lost isle 
of Atlantis held not a town so fair, the empires of the world con- 
tain not one to match with it. Above, the sky itself is apple-green 
and flushes thence through silver into primrose in the west, where 
it is hidden in a band of crimson cloud. From out this pageant 
as it moves in unpremeditated beauty, will come to you eventually 




A BALANCE ROCK 



a sense of voices speaking to your soul, of soft, mellifluent voices 
whispering the meaning of God's Country in your ear. You 
can not well have come thus far upon your pilgrimage without it 
being spoken many times — indeed, it was carolled in the first 
bird's song, the mocking bird we met on Raton Mountain, it 
has greeted you out of the deserts, it has called from the moun- 
tain tops, you heard it at the Enchanted Mesa, and have repeated 
it in the Hopi prayer. These were, however, but echoes of God's 
Country's mighty voice, which no man may begin to comprehend 
until he has been baptized in the canon's magic hues and received 

[219] 




GRAND CANON 



[220] 




AT THK fOClT OF THE t MhK 



[221] 



the benediction of its lasting majesty. For in this rockbound 
temple dwells the spirit of the land, the spirit whose essence is 
over hill and dale, on desert, mesa, mountain and in cafion, wood 
and field. With infinite tenderness it breathes its message, bid- 
ding all remember from what divine degree they are descended 
and to what heritage they have fallen heir. "From me you came," 
it says, "to me you go, and while your term of service lasts, from 
out of me must come your inspiration. You are one with the 
sun and the moon and the stars, with the grass and the wind and 
the rain, and only so far as you labor with these can you win to 
my great ideal, or be made free of the paradise I spend my 
strength creating. Feel your sisterhood with the flowers, learn 
the language of the trees, drink deep of the inspiration which 
flows from a forest spring, let the desert kiss you with its heat 
and the canons cool your body with their breeze, so and so only 
shall you prove yourself, so and so only will I give to you the ever- 
lasting comfort of my peace." 



FINIS 



[222] 



SCATTERED THOUGHTS OF THE WRITER 



FOR CHAPTERS IV, V, VI AND XI 



'ff 







HE little harborage of pines around the base of 
El Morro Rock is the last which we shall enter 
for many a weary mile, for now our pilgrim- 
age casts loose from its mountain moorings 
and takes ship upon the fragrant sea of sage. 
The tide of this sets westward, the whither we 
would go, and so, with no clearing papers and 
no compass but the sun, we needs must drift as 
it appoints, trusting to Providence for a safe arrival. It takes us 
first through the narrow gaps between a chain of stalwart mesas, 
churning its angry currents the while into twisted tidal rips, 
and brings us at last past many reefs to the head of the winding 
valley next beyond. Here, reunited once again in a flood of spicy, 
fragrant sheen, it eddies for a little space as if uncertain where to 
go, but finally gaining courage with added impetus, bears us 
adown the valley between the rolling hills, now foaming in cactus 
thickets over a shelving ledge of stones, now purling darkly into 
groves of juniper or pinon, but always flowing onward like a 
mighty, turbid river until the wake of the road grows dim in the 
I'etreating distance, only to dash us at the end against the trap of 
a fearsome caiion. The orifice of this is both too unexpected and 
too near for the sage to turn the current of its effluence awry, so 
we perforce, flung roughly across a boulder weir, must hazard 
the entry with it and surge onward through the gorge, rippling and 
rising to the angry billows, which splash the cliff's with their scat- 
tered spray, and timid of each corner lest this should be a blind, 
and we be dammed beyond all peradventure. The sage, however, 
with many turnings makes headway slowly until at length there 
comes a stretch of straighter path where it can gather strength to 
push the enclosing walls asunder, and lifting us over a shoal of 
sand on the crest of a hurtling comber, carry us safely out upon 
an open, undulating prairie. 



[223] 



Our pilgrimage at El Morro Rock must leave the harborage 
of the pines and drift west for fully thirty miles. 

At El Morro Rock the tide of sage sets westward, coming 
through a dozen channels betw^een a chain of mesas to the head of 
the long, wide valley next beyond, and hither our pilgrimage must 
follow. 

At El Morro Rock our pilgrimage cuts loose from its moun- 
tain moorings, and sailing forth from the ultimate, cool harborage 
of the pines, is borne on the flood tide of the sage afar into the 
west. With only the sun for compass, and no other chart than 
cheer, it swings through a chain of mesas, where the sagebrush 
pours in rapids over the rock-encompassed channels, then glides 
serenely for many miles down a winding valley where the sage 
rolls evenly like a mighty river dyed in the gray sheen of the dawn, 
now foaming in cactus thickets, over a shelving ledge of stones, 
now purling darkly into groves of juniper and pihon, but flowing 
ever, ever on like a mighty river of gray-green sheen until the 
wake of the road is lost in the mist of increasing distance. 



These are not all of the entries upon El Morro Rock. There 
are others whose orthography forbids interpretation, still others 
partially destroyed by centuries of weather, and others not per- 
taining to the Conquistadors, but written later by dirty vandals 
to their enduring shame. But these are sufficient to reveal the 
magniflcent memorial which the whole of them compose to the flrst 
and finest of God's Country gentlemen ; so let us leave the other 
until another visit, and ride once more upon our way to Zuni. 

The distance thither is thirty miles, but seems much longer 
by the trail. 

The road from El Morro Rock to Zuni is empty of interest, 
so let us for the nonce dispense with all itinerary, and placing an 
owl quill under our tongues, as the Zuni witches do, wish ourselves 
thither and be whisked away. 

Here, on a knoll by a muddy river, which ripples over a sun- 
burned plain, stands a most mysterious village — the heir to 
seven towns, those far-famed cities of Cibola, which Fray Marcos 
of Niza sighted in 1539. He came no nearer than ten miles to 

[224] 



these, since his negro companion, Estevan, whom he had sent to 
announce his coming, was murdered in one of them, Hawikuh, 
but nevertheless he carried to Mendoza, the viceroy of Mexico, 
such glowing accounts of their wealth and importance that Coro- 
nado and the first Conquistadors were sent against them the fol- 
lowing year to capture them for the King of Spain. These came 
and saw and conquered, as Caesar did of old, but found within 




LOOKING INTO THE CANON 



no booty for their pains. However, the Cibolese or Zuni, as 
they were later called, played a leading part thenceforward in 
the epic of the conquest of God's Country by the Spaniards. 

Zuni, the terraced city, is itself upon a terrace of the land, 
the lower step of a long plateau, which runs in ridges toward the 
north and ends at last in a nest of hills where dwell the Navajos. 
This region is one vast meadow of chaparral and sage, sprinkled 
with yellow daisies and pink or purple flox, but saving the piiion 
windbreaks on the crests of its swelling knolls it owns no shade, 

[225] 



nor can it boast of a single welcome habitation, so that the traveler 
riding it soon wearies of its waste and longs to reach the reserva- 
tion boundary. 

This reservation, set aside for the use of the Navajos, in 
northeast Arizona and northwest New Mexico, is in its compass 
suited to their need, an area containing twenty thousand of square 
miles in the prairie's midst. 

These Ashiwi or Zuni were a domineering folk, strong both 
in numbers and the faith of their godly origin, and so for long, 
their cities stood unperiled on the plain, growing in wealth and 
power until at last their fame spread far among the nations 
round about them, and their name rang through God's Country 
like a clarion of war. The Seven Cities of Cibola, thus men spoke 
of them and marveled, for since none durst adventure near, a 
host of gilded legends encircled them like a palisade. It was 
said the king of Cibola had hosts at his command ; handmen and 
maidens waited at his doors; he owned a herd of shaggy cows 
the like of which was never seen ; jewels adorned his person ; his 
treasure filled seven rooms; the temples where he worshiped 
were flagged with precious stones. 

When Fray Marco of Niza, the first Caucasian to penetrate 
God's Country on a voyage of discovery, stood on an eminence 
and gazed upon this prairie from afar in 1539, he counted seven 
pueblos that were situated in its midst. The smoke from these, 
like incense, rose in the hazy, noonday air, bidding him welcome, 
but the padre was a wily man and had no purpose to risk his 
neck with their inhabitants, so he sent his guide and companion, 
the negro Estevan, to prepare them for his coming, but they 
waited not to learn the purport of his message, but straightway 
murdered him. Therefore, the padre, ill at ease, took formal 
possession of them in the name of the king of Spain — an easy 
accomplishment from his eminence — and turned upon his tracks 
to tramp the return to Mexico. One consolation did he have, 
however — he had proved the existence, to his way of thinking, of 
those Seven Cities of Cibola, whose fame had been noised abroad 
in Culcian for many months, and now that he had seen them with 
his own two eager eyes — seen their walls shining in the sun, and 
their people crowding like black ants upon their house tops, he had 

[226] 



no doubt but what the tales of their importance, wealth and 
jewels were of a very truth, the truth indeed. So, arriving at 
last in Mexico, he hastened to Mendoza, and his lieutenant, Coro- 
nado, the governor of Galacia, and laid before him a rich account 
of the marvels he had seen. Indeed, the cloth of his tale was 
such as would have dazzled a less adventurous man than Fran- 
cisco Vasques Coronado, for who would not chance his life — his 










i:RAM) I'A.NUX 



soul — for the conquest of seven cities, whose streets were paved 
with gold, and where the women walked the day in garments 
heavy with precious stones! So sound the trumpet call to arms 
and we will venture forth to win an empire worth a thousand 
times the value of Peru. 

Fray Marcos of Niza's golden tale spread rapidly from mouth 
to mouth, gaining, you may be sure, with each transference, and 
thus it was not long until volunteers for this conquest of Cibola 
outran the requisite. With the blessing of Mendoza, and Fray 



[227] 



Marco as a guide, Coronado began his northward march in the 
spring of 1540, and reached the prairie of Cibola in the following 
July. The way had been hard and long and tough, with many 
dangers and many ills, and the sight of the seven cities came just 
in the nick of time to save the army from mutiny and retreat. 
There they lay, however, in the cup of the prairie like pearls in a 
goblet of Andalusian wine, the sunset gold on their terraced walls 
and the smoke from their chimneys like pennants flying a chal- 
lenge to the air. Fray Marco and Coronado could scarcely wait 
until morning, but the dawn light came at last to gild the silver 
surplice of the moon, and with halberds up and sword blades 
drawn the army marched to attack the nearest — the town of 
Hawikuh. A rush toward the gateway, a sally from within, the 
sting of arrows, the flashing of steel, Coronado wounded. Fray 
Marcos at prayer, a shout, a charge, a melee, and behold, a city 
of Cibola was in the grip of Spain. But what is this? 



Mud walls, rough wooden ladders, empty rooms, streets 
paved wnth but the prairie, house tops but burnished with the sun ! 
And those upon the house tops, who are they? A band of naked 
savages, with fragile bows and arrows, yes, naked, save when 
clothed in robes of rabbit skin or feather. No jewels but tur- 
quois earrings or strands of wampum beads, no cobblestones of 
gold, no palace, no temples hung with precious spoil, no treasure- 
trove, indeed, at all. Is this your bruited empire that shall put 
Peru to shame? 

Fray Marco could but answer that it was Cibola, and admit 
that the seven cities were but a pauper necklace for the empire 
of Spain. Poor man, he was as undeceived as any. 

A collection of pueblos — nothing less and nothing more — 
if anything, ruder than those of today, the abodes of the Ashi or 
Zuni Indians, such indeed were the seven cities on the plain of 
Cibola, and although they fell an easy prey to the disappointed 
Spaniards, the booty within them was too insignificant to pay 
for the trouble even of destroying them. Coronado, however, 
was not a man to sheath his sword on an enterprise in the face 
of a defeat. Danger and disappointment but whetted it the 

[228] 



keener, so, having received the vassalage of the province of Ci- 
bola, he forged ahead eastward on the route, which we have thus 
far followed, driving his hope before him even to the Quivira 
Plains in Kansas, to leave it as a hostage in the hands of Quivira 
Indians. Thence he trudged back the weary way to Mexico, a 
broken man, empty of heart and purse; he trudged the weary way 
to Mexico, whither the poor Fray Marcos had preceded him, to tell 
the bitter story of discomfiture. 




"RAIN. RAIN." 



But the maidenhead of God's Country had been pricked with 
the tramp of steel, and was pregnant with the empire which it 
has since become, so that other discoverers came on the heels of 
Vasques Coronado — Chamuscado, Espejo, Onate, and finally 
Diego de Vargas — and each of them visited or stayed in the 
cities of Cibola. The Zunis wisely bowing to the inevitable, re- 
ceived these with an outward show of welcome courtesy, even per- 
mitting soldiers to be quartered in their towns, listening to the 
padres who followed in their wake, receiving baptism and build- 
ing churches, where they made show to worship the god of the 
aliens. In their hearts, however, was an angry hate, and when- 

[229] 



ever occasion permitted they revolted from their thrall, killing 
the priests, destroying their churches and massacring their 
guards. Hence, the province of Cibola was rife with war for the 
succeeding two centuries and a half, and in the stress arising 
from the attacks and the reprisals all of the seven cities were 
either abandoned or destroyed, the last of them crumbling into 
ruin in the years succeeding the Great Revolt of Santa Ana, 1680. 
Some time thereafter the remnant of this seven-armored people 
builded another city on the ruins of Hawikuh — the pueblo of 
Shiwona. 



I'l.UUD EFFECTS IN CANON 



In Zuni, the Pueblo on the Plain of Cibola 

AMONG the many inscriptions of the Conquistadors, which 
hang their panoply of fame upon the cliff of El Morro 
Rock, is one far older, more archaic, less lightly read than 
they, a pictograph of the sun and moon, a stag with branching 
antlers, and a bird upon the wing. How long before the conquest 
this writing rested there, no man has means of knowing, but Don 

[230] 



Silva de Nieto encroached upon its portion with the titles of his 
name. To him it was as nothing, for he understood it not; to 
us, however, it is charged with purport, for it is an autograph of 
the tribe of the Ashiwi or Zuni, a race grown old in the service of 
God's Country, once its kings, whom we are next to visit upon 
this pilgrimage. 

These Zunis, in the dawn light of their actual remembrance 
— although their legends take them yet farther back — found 
themselves in the middle of an undulating prairie, a wide expanse 
of open land like a shallow, land-locked sea, to which the flood of 
sage comes down from El Morro Plain, through thirty miles of 
westering, winding valley, now foaming in cactus thickets over a 
shelving ledge of stones, now purling darkly into groves of juniper 
and pinons, then races in a tidal rip through a narrow, tortuous 
cafion, and finally hurtles a shoal of sand to empty its effluence 
afar, and spread its mass of fragrant sheen across this prairie in 
rippling billows. An arid, wind-swept, sun-scorched spot to be 
sure, for a home, but these Zunis were a dauntless, domineering 
folk, and besides their gods commanded them to cease their wan- 
dering here, and so they builded them seven towns in this rolling 
prairie's midst, which grew and prospered for many centuries. 



In Zuni, the Pueblo in the Province of Cibola 

A CHAIN of stalwart mesas stands on the western edge of 
El Morro Plain, and through the gaps, which link these 
each with the other, pours the sage, racing in tidal rips 
along the narrow, twisted channels to the head of the winding 
valley next beyond. Here the gray-green torrents reunite in a 
flood of fragrant sheen, which eddies for a little space as if uncer- 
tain where to go, and then flows down the valley between the roll- 
ing hills, now foaming in cactus thickets over a shelving ledge of 
stones, now purling darkly into groves of juniper or pihon, until, 
sweeping unwarily round a bluff, it is caught in the trap of a tor- 
tuous caiion. The orifice of this is both too unexpected and too 
near for the sage to turn the current of its effluence awry, so it 
hazards the entry, straining through a verdant weir of pine and 

[231] 



surges onward through the gorge, splashing the intertwining 
cliffs with the froth from its angry billows, yet timid of each suc- 
cessive corner lest this should be a blind. At length, however, 
there comes a stretch of straighter path where the prisoned sage 
can gather impetus to push the enclosing walls asunder, and rush- 
ing a shoal of sand that bars the delta of this valley, spreads its 
tides once more in freedom over an undulating prairie, to which 
it gives the texture of a shallow, land-locked sea. 



But it is in the sunset hour 
that the canon is supreme. For 
then the air collects its hues and 
spins them with the sky, to 
weave for it a fabric of divine 
beatitude, and then the canon 
wakes its cliffs from their after- 
noon siesta and bids them don 
this bridal veil of marriage with 
the day. One after one these 
rocks come forth from their am- 
ber haze of dreams to walk the 
gray-green valleys in the splen- 
dor of their height, until at last 
their company bewilders mind 
and eye, and one forbears to 
number their unending multi- 
tude. Vishnu is there, and 
Newberry, and the others we 
have known — The Angels' Gateway, Zoroaster, Sheba and 
Solomon, Ayer's Peak, the Viking Ships, the Palisades — but 
with these such a mighty host of undiscovered forms that one 
can scarce distinguish their outlines from the rest. Nay, even 
these appear more perfect than ever heretofore, for at this vesper 
service each monument and stone within the chasm lifts its head, 
however small it be, so that the slopes are militant with pinnacles 
and spires. So soon as each of these arise in unsubmissive gran- 
deur they join their shadows with the rest and send these in a wild 




THE SACKED ROCK 



[232] 



array toward the dizzy rim, as if they would hew the forest down 
with these slender, purple spears, and win to freedom the land 
which radiates beyond. Yet never do they reach it, for the 
moment each appears, the air flings a lariat of light around the 
angry crest and drawing taut the noose, compels the monument 
to wear the motley badge of service of the sky. 



[233] 



m 1 ^^ 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



-^•ij'u J jfcji 



017 063 038 5 



